So I owned my 2019 BMW M4 for 7 years and 3 months and my car had full body PPF since the beginning. Before I traded in my car, my car had 78,400ish miles. I really wanted to test how good PPF is. The PPF I had installed was LLumar Platinum PPF, it is a 10 year warranty film that is 8mils thick, for reference a human hair is 1 mils thick. There is thicker 10mils ppf but I am not sure if 2 extra mils would make a huge difference. I paid about 5-6K for it back in 2019.
My roof is newer since it's XPEL Ultimate Black, it's colored PPF, which is only 3 years old or so. Still warrantied for 10 years and lasts longer than black vinyl like 3M 2080. My window trim is XPEL Ultimate.
I did not have professional ceramic coating installed and I only use normal off the shelf items like Turtle Wax and whatever, nothing professional grade.
From 2019 to 2020 (Pre-Pandemic), my car was garaged at night but sat outside in the sun from Monday to Friday, 8 AM to 7 PM. My car still sat out in the sun like when I go to like a mall, to the gym, etc but just not like 5 days a week.
I wished I washed my car before I did this, but I just ran out of time before my G82 arrived.
Anyways, people were always curious about long term PPF and how it will look after years. So I did 7 years and 3 months with this PPF. I did not two bucket wash, I ran it through automated car washes a few times, and I do pressure wash it. I never had the film lift from automated car washes or pressure washing it. I basically abused my PPF because I wanted to see just how capable it really was.
So from my abuse, the film did not yellow, lift, crack, or peel. However, road debris did chip and bunch up my PPF in a few locations. These pictures are some of the worst offenders but overall, the film still looks fine.
Swirl marks kinda stopped healing recently where I now notice it in the sun and in specific lighting but it's still significantly less than a normal car that is improperly washed.
My car is dirty but it's pretty shiny still.
My headlights still look brand new, no fogging or hazing. You can see some damage to the PPF which I highlighted in red. But my headlight looks new.
My side skirt right before the rear tire is heavily patterned / peppered. This does not come off and the only mod to my wheels is going 265/285 tires. I ran MPS4S for most of it's life and the default MPSS * when I first got the car. It's one of the most heavily impacted zones.
My front bumper has the most PPF damage as expected.
This is where the grille and front bumper meet. My PPF for the front bumper was plotted and not a custom cut hence it did not go edge to edge. But even if it was edge to edge, you can the dark spot the debris left on my PPF from impact.
Some things puncture the PPF and some things don't. You can tell from the white dents that it didn't go through the PPF but you can tell something hit.
Sometimes things just take paint and PPF with it.
And sometimes the PPF just gets taken off but paint is not damaged.
Is full body PPF or PPF worth it in the long term? I will leave that up to you to decide but just remember that PPF is not indestructible and there are limits. For me, it was worth it because I am sure my bumper would look a lot worse without PPF. Especially from those that dented the PPF but did not take paint, I am sure it will take paint if PPF was not there.
The new car, waiting for full body PPF.
My roof is newer since it's XPEL Ultimate Black, it's colored PPF, which is only 3 years old or so. Still warrantied for 10 years and lasts longer than black vinyl like 3M 2080. My window trim is XPEL Ultimate.
I did not have professional ceramic coating installed and I only use normal off the shelf items like Turtle Wax and whatever, nothing professional grade.
From 2019 to 2020 (Pre-Pandemic), my car was garaged at night but sat outside in the sun from Monday to Friday, 8 AM to 7 PM. My car still sat out in the sun like when I go to like a mall, to the gym, etc but just not like 5 days a week.
I wished I washed my car before I did this, but I just ran out of time before my G82 arrived.
Anyways, people were always curious about long term PPF and how it will look after years. So I did 7 years and 3 months with this PPF. I did not two bucket wash, I ran it through automated car washes a few times, and I do pressure wash it. I never had the film lift from automated car washes or pressure washing it. I basically abused my PPF because I wanted to see just how capable it really was.
So from my abuse, the film did not yellow, lift, crack, or peel. However, road debris did chip and bunch up my PPF in a few locations. These pictures are some of the worst offenders but overall, the film still looks fine.
Swirl marks kinda stopped healing recently where I now notice it in the sun and in specific lighting but it's still significantly less than a normal car that is improperly washed.
My car is dirty but it's pretty shiny still.
My headlights still look brand new, no fogging or hazing. You can see some damage to the PPF which I highlighted in red. But my headlight looks new.
My side skirt right before the rear tire is heavily patterned / peppered. This does not come off and the only mod to my wheels is going 265/285 tires. I ran MPS4S for most of it's life and the default MPSS * when I first got the car. It's one of the most heavily impacted zones.
My front bumper has the most PPF damage as expected.
This is where the grille and front bumper meet. My PPF for the front bumper was plotted and not a custom cut hence it did not go edge to edge. But even if it was edge to edge, you can the dark spot the debris left on my PPF from impact.
Some things puncture the PPF and some things don't. You can tell from the white dents that it didn't go through the PPF but you can tell something hit.
Sometimes things just take paint and PPF with it.
And sometimes the PPF just gets taken off but paint is not damaged.
Is full body PPF or PPF worth it in the long term? I will leave that up to you to decide but just remember that PPF is not indestructible and there are limits. For me, it was worth it because I am sure my bumper would look a lot worse without PPF. Especially from those that dented the PPF but did not take paint, I am sure it will take paint if PPF was not there.
The new car, waiting for full body PPF.
