I headed over to mom's today to teach her how to wash and shine the new car up all purdy like. While she was working on hers, I did mine as well. I was eager to try out the new NXT I had purchesed, as I've heard glowing reviews on it.
We washed both cars with Dawn to remove dealer crap, then washed them again in car shampoo (Zaino). After we dried them, we put on a coat of NXT spray. Easy on, easy off. Nice. Then we put a coat of the NXT polish on. Again: easy on, easy off.
I stood back from the cars and looked at them: one really bright blue Mazda 3, one bright white VW Golf. They looked... clean. And that was about it. The colors didn't pop, and the reflectivity didn't do much to excite me. I had expected the NXT to be much deeper and wetter looking. So, to experiment, I finished with a coat of Zaino spray on the 3 while mom finished her NXT buffing. There was a noticeable difference. Without telling her what I was doing, I went over to her car, had her rub a towel over the front quarter panel, and saying "remember how that feels". Then I shot it with Zaino spray, wiped, buffed, and had her run the towel over it again. "Big difference... much smoother" was her evaluation.
Then, to further test my theory, I did about 1/3 of her hood with the Zaino. It was clear out, so you could see sky and tree reflections. When looking at the same reflected image in the hood, my mom (who knows absolutely nothing about car care) commented that the Zaino'd part was "like putting glasses on", because it was so much clearer and that much deeper. Naturally, that meant I had to finish the rest of her car. Heh.
So, this NXT stuff... I'm not impressed. The more I look at my car, the further from impressed I am, actually. I won't say it's bad stuff at all; it's very easy to apply and remove, and it looks decent. But I expected a heck of a lot more out of the product than this. I put it squarely in the "over-hyped, under-delivered" category. It's a pretty big statement when my mom can see a big difference.
I will be stripping it off of my car the first chance I get, and redoing the car in Zaino. There's no way I'd take it anywhere near Mojo. Besides, my mom says Zaino is better, and mothers always know best.
I took pics with my camera phone, but I dunno how they turned out. I'll check, and if they're no good, I'll take some others.