Self-healing paint? Scratch me, I must be dreaming

Mar 19, 2009

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Special to the Star

Soon, my car worries will all be over.

A recent article has me dancing in the streets, because paint scratches will be a thing of the past. Researchers have found a way to induce a chemical reaction in molecules they can put in automobile paint to heal a scratch. All it needs is an hour of ultraviolet light goodness – direct sunlight – and it's good to go.

Maybe this will finally put to rest that old chestnut of a lie that I have endured in so many parking lots: "Oh, don't worry, that'll buff right out." Nothing ever buffs right out, especially not when it's a grimacing woman with a spit-soaked Kleenex doing the buffing.

Car paint is something I long ago gave up stressing about. It's like expecting a manicure to last for six years. It can't happen. I had my van about 11 minutes when Christopher, then 15, booted a soccer ball into the back of it with his size 16 feet. From inside the house, I heard a thwock that silenced a pack of seven kids. I ran outside to find every one of them staring at me. Except Christopher.

The Poor Sod laughed when I went to get the toilet plunger, but it turned out my physics were right if my application was a little off. The body shop used a big plunger thing to pop the dent out. But the scratches that have ensued over the years? Not so lucky.

Automotive paint has evolved immensely, and I suppose this was inevitable. Dumbed down, molecules in the paint react to a scratch by having little arms that reach out and re-bond when exposed to ultraviolet light, effectively scabbing over the "wound".

While this self-healing property seems a little creepily anthropomorphic to me, I admit I could get used to driving around in Wolverine, if I had to.

I've watched grown men cry over scratches on their cars. It takes a special kind of insanity to pretend something so big and so exposed to the elements could remain unblemished. I was driving across the 401 last Sunday and hit a long stretch that can only be called Gravel Alley. It's like getting caught walking in a rainstorm – do you speed up or slow down? Either way, wet is wet, and you don't have an umbrella.

I watched a guy in a pretty little Mazda RX8 slow down, then pull over. It had to be the stones, though I wasn't sure just what he was going to do about it. I was so busy backing off from traffic so I could avoid having my windshield nailed (is there a more irritating non-lethal car incident than a chip in your windshield?), I didn't notice if he'd found a way to tiptoe down the shoulder to an exit.

I've discovered the hard way that "buffing out a scratch" means little when so many parts of so many cars are made from plastic now. Buff all you like – but you might as well name it because that scratch is officially part of your family.

Some people have better luck than others; my sister has a 2001 Toyota RAV4 that people often think is new. She even still has the hard spare wheel cover that most people wreck within minutes. Granted, it has very low mileage, but when I suggested she enter it into a beauty pageant, she decided on Toddlers & Tiaras & Toyotas.

I hope the new additive becomes workable for the unbuffed, like me. Though I admit, I'd rather they figured out how to get it into windshields first.

Lorraine Sommerfeld's column appears Thursdays on Wheels.ca. lorraineonline.ca

Toronto Star