How to Repair Your Car Scratch

The bad news: Your car has been keyed by some psychopath. The good? Our step-by-step DIY guide walks you through diagnosing and repairing the dreaded car scratch.



Your vintage sports car deserves the best treatment, which is why you always park it in the farthest, emptiest reaches of the lot, as far as you can get from the possibility of a casual door ding perpetrated by a careless shopper. You even park it straddling two spaces, to protect its tender flanks.


To your horror, a quick trip into the department store, punctuated by two long hikes

across an empty expanse of lot (one into the store and a second back to the car), ends in your worst nightmare. Your car has been keyed by some psychopath, who even had the temerity to write you a rude note about the inappropriateness of your parking habits.

Anatomy of a Scratch

All scratches are not the same. Some "scratches" may not even be scratches at all. You find these when a painted car bumper or wooden post, or the rubber bumper on a shopping cart, rubs up against the body. The object doing the rubbing may be softer than the paint. Instead of scratching the car, it deposits material on the paint surface -- a mark that is actually raised above the paint, not gouged into it.

If the object is harder than the paint, guess where the material gets transferred? From your car to the shopping cart, leaving paint missing. Some scratches can be rescued, while others can't.

But many marks simply "scratch the surface," as it were. The offending object gouges the clearcoat and even some of the base color, while leaving the primer and metal unscathed. When there's still color at the bottom of the scratch it may be possible to remove it with some careful sanding, buffing and waxing.