370Z/Black/Swirls

kfscoll

There absolutely is such a thing as self-healing paint (here's a link). My 2011 Infiniti G37x has it; Nissan only discontinued it for the '10 MY as they reworked the formulation. I don't know whether the '12 Zs have it but if they do there would be a sticker under the hood that says "Scratch Shield" on it.

Also, Zs do NOT have a single stage paint...they're all a basecoat/clearcoat formulation. The easiest way to prove this is to use some mild abrasive polish on your car. If the paint were single-stage, you'd see the paint's color appear on your rag as you polish. This definitely doesn't happen with the Z.

I can say from experience that the Scratch Shield paint is a royal pain to detail. It's very hard and only responds to certain polishes designed for hard and/or ceramic clearcoats (I use Menzerna polishes with some success). Even then it requires more work than a "standard" clear to remove defects. And I've yet to notice the self-healing feature actually work.

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2009 Brilliant Silver 370Z 6MT coupe w/ Touring, Sport, and Navigation packages

MattP725

Not really true... the reason paint doesn't come off is because you are polishing your clear coat not your paint. If you were to go abrasive enough you would eventually pull paint from any finish after wearing through the clear. I am not saying that the Z is or is not single stage, I am just saying that it has nothing to do with removing paint when compounding.

kfscoll

You just said the exact same thing I did. When you polish a car that has a clearcoat (and clearcoat IS paint), you can't see it on your rag because, uh, it's clear. That doesn't mean you're not removing paint, because you are, you're just removing clear paint. Single-stage paints don't have any clear on top of the color coat so when you polish those you can actually see the paint that's coming off.

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2009 Brilliant Silver 370Z 6MT coupe w/ Touring, Sport, and Navigation packages