Well, I washed my 81 GL hatch for the first time since I got it, and the driver's side shines pretty well. The passenger side, though, is absolutely garbage. The paint is badly faded, it won't buff off almost like a really poor clearcoat job. The odd thing is, my 82 DL wagon was the exact same way. Right down to the hood being divided just to the right of center, nice paint on the driver's side, crap on the passenger's side. Is this a common thing on these cars, or did I just happen to get two near-antiques with bad paint?

do the "wd40 test"

 

spray some wd40 onto a white paper towel, high quality like "rags in a box"

then rub the paint and see if it shines up

 

works like a charm!

maybe they had 2 guys running the paint booth in the 80's, and the guy working on the passenger side was lazy.

I could never get my 86 gl wagon to shine either. It was pretty beat cosmeticly when I bought it. I could also not get my girlfriend's old 88 dl sedan to shine, but I'm pretty sure it had been repainted wi/ cheap acrylic paint. So I think these may have both been unique cases. I have seen plenty of ea subes that had good paint.

Let me just say if you spray your car with wd40 dont try to repaint it anytime soon. If you do It will fish eye like crazy( this means the paint will not stick it will move away from the efected area, like oil in water) and you will want to shoot you self. Even worse is the body shop will want to kill you if they paint it. Even if you try to wash it, wax and grease remove it, just try and clean it in any way it will take a while for that to get out. So I just wanted to warn you about this, and if you start to sand the car without even trying to clean it off first you will probly be screwed even more because know you opened up even more of the paint for it to go into.