“If I were to protect my car in Xpel PPF and be on a budget. What panels take priority?”
It all begins with answering 2 questions first:
What’s is your budget? And how much do you love your car?
What we tell all of our customers is that if you were to protect only one component on your vehicle with Xpel PPF, we recommend you opt for the Front Bumper Coverage.
Second, to that, we would recommend wrapping the hood. Over the years of seeing 1000’s customers' cars, we’ve noticed a pattern. The two components that get mangled with rock chips the most are without a doubt the hood and the front bumper. Making them the highest impact area on your vehicle.
Another reason why coverage on these areas is so important is that when we get a customer request to restore their paint job (after having owned it for several years) to new again, we can always restore the paint on every panel back to perfection EVERYWHERE except…
yup… You guessed it! The Hood and the Front Bumper.
And the reason why we can’t get it back to 100% is mostly because of all the sandblasting, and rock chips left behind after driving thousands of miles on Toronto roads. Anyone who knows of the 401 knows that the air isn’t pure. Including all sorts of things from vehicles brake dust + construction road work.
The only way to repair your bumper at this point is to repaint it. Which just for the bumper alone could cost anywhere from $650-$1500. Depending on several things of course. Like how expensive your paint is, how difficult the painting process is, and how experienced/talented the painter you hire is. Hard to find good painters in Canada in our experience. However we’ve been using Champion Motors in Toronto Ontario for our paintwork/paint restoration, and they’ve been the best in Toronto in our opinion.
So, if you are on a little bit of a budget and are only going to protect 1- 2 areas after picking up your brand new car, it would be ideal to install nothing but Xpel PPF on both the Front Bumper and Hood.
Now, if those 2 impact areas were previously protected, we could have easily removed the old paint protection film. Leaving the paint underneath un-touched by any rock chips or blemishes, therefore, allowing us as Paint Correction specialists to complete the customer's car back to 100%. As we don’t stop until its perfect:)
The alternative to that would be to repaint the hood and bumper which is twice as expensive and it makes selling your car much more difficult because once a future potential buyer hears that you have repainted the hood and bumper. They will assume it’s been in a front-end collision. NOBODY likes to hear “these panels were repainted”. As people tend to assume the worst-case scenario when buying a used vehicle.
Aside from rock chips making your vehicle look worn out, old and less desirable. It also rusts (if the component is metal, like the hood). The bumper on the other hand is plastic on 80% of vehicles. And for or those who don’t know, rust is like covid. It spreads.
Be safe…Wrap the whole vehicle;)
