Dragon Auto

10/19/2026

Our client's Lexus is 26 years old, and it's factory paint is smoother than a lot of the $100,000 brand new cars we see!

orange peel is the bumpy, wavy texture you see in a car's reflections, and it comes from the factory. paint jobs used to leave the factory with a lot less of it, and now we see it on brand new Porsches, Benzes, BMWs, Audis, and Mazdas, even if they're $100,000 or $200,000 cars

When we apply it, Rocklear doesn't magically fix orange peel, it works with what's already there, so the clarity of the hexagon lights in that reflection, is the paint this Lexus left the factory with back in 2000

we've always had a soft spot for older cars, so this one was a fun one for us. 209,000 miles on it and a single layer of Icon Rocklear, and even the top surfaces that got the most sun looked so good

the next day at pickup, I told its owner how it stacks up against the new cars we get in: "when you put them side by side, it's jarring"

comment LX470 and we'll send you the full video: the whole coating night on this 26-year-old Lexus, and its owner seeing it the next day

10/18/2026

We've always had a soft spot for older cars, so Matthew's 26-year-old Lexus was a fun one for us

Cars just used to be made better 20 years ago. His 2000 Lexus LX470 has 209,000 miles on it, and the engine in this thing is impossible to kill. He liked how his newer Lexus came out with us so much that he brought this one in too, and it got a single layer of Icon Rocklear!

Jenn coated it overnight while I filmed, and I kept pointing out the paint on camera. It has less orange peel than most brand-new cars we see, including $100,000 European ones.

There's no big before and after, since the paint was already in good shape. One deeper scratch didn't come out all the way, and we'll do the touch-up paint at his 30-day checkup, once the coating has hardened.

Thank you Matthew for trusting us with a second Lexus 🙏🏽

The coating install at night is up on YouTube, with the Lexus at pickup under the showroom lights!

Our client Matthew's 2000 Lexus LX 470 has 209,000 miles on it, and...

10/14/2026

This 1997 NSX-T was built the same year I was born, so this project hit different

I started Dragon Auto because of my love for Japanese import tuner culture, and the NSX is one of the few JDM legends. It has so many cool aspects to it, like his friend spent eight years building this custom hood; and it's one of the cleanest, tastefully modified, NSXs we've had come through the shop to date!

It came to us with 28 years of wear, and 80,000 miles of road trips behind it, we prepped every panel, applied three layers of Icon Rocklear ™️ to the front end, with one on the rest of the car, and ceramic coated his glass, trim, and his TE37s; everything went back home with its shine back!

Comment NSX, and we'll send you the link to check out the full video of this project!

10/05/2026

if we'd just put Icon Rocklear straight onto this faded 15 year old Honda Fit, it wasn't gonna fix it

it was the first of three sun-damaged Honda Fits we brought back to life in one weekend, we had to get our boy Felix looking right again!

back in march 2025, we compounded the paint first to take off that dead, faded top layer of clear coat, cleaned and coated the trim, masked everything off, and only then did the Rocklear install. the prep is what brought the paint back, and the Rocklear permanently sealed it in

a minute later in the full video, we finished compounding it and I said "that's like a night and day difference"

comment HONDAFIT and we'll send you the full video: taking Felix's 2010 Honda Fit from faded to finished, the roof that was too far gone to save, and his reaction at pickup! (He loved it 🙏🏽)

10/02/2026

In 2019, nobody would let me practice a ceramic coating on their car, except one childhood friend. He handed me the keys to his Honda Accord and said "bro, I trust you," and I spent that weekend in my grandparents' garage doing my first one.

I sold ceramic coatings for years after that, and we don't put them on paint anymore. In 2023 we switched to Icon Rocklear because it's a better coating for our clients in the long run, and we gave up a lot of repeat revenue to do it.

Most ceramic coating warranties require a yearly inspection at the shop that installed it, at around $200 a visit. Of the 30 shops and mobile businesses I checked around the Bay Area, only nine publish a price, and a coating with a 5-year warranty averages about $1,300. Covering 15 years takes three of those plus the inspections in between, which adds up to over $6,000 for one car.

Icon Rocklear is one application with a 15-year manufacturer warranty, and there's no yearly inspection or reapplication unless something hits your car and we have to put it back on.

Before you book anywhere, us included, ask what it takes to keep the warranty active, then add it up over 15 years.

If we still sold ceramic coatings, one customer would be worth over...

09/30/2026

we had to take the coating off an R34 GTR's hood, and redo it six times, because I refused to send it home with a subpar install

it was a dream car I always wanted to work on, and the owner's dream car too

we didn't know its last owner in Japan had repainted that hood, so I was at the shop until 5 or 6 in the morning

earlier in the full video, I compared it to stamping concrete: once it sets, it's game over, so you want an installer who actually cares before they go home for the day

comment REDO and we'll send you the full video: a brand new M3 that showed up with 750 miles and two rock chips already on the hood, and how we protected it

on the sixth try, it finally looked good enough to meet our standards

09/28/2026

5 a.m. in april 2025, working on a $200k 1975 911 restoration build, and I was like, "damn, this is real now"

it was one of the first classic Porsche's we ever got, so it really felt like a turning point moment

right after this in the full video, I said 23-year-old Noah probably could have cracked under the pressure. probably would have, I would bet on that

comment OURSTORY and we'll send you the full video: why we skipped PPF on that 911, and the rest of that unscripted 5 a.m. ramble

from my grandparents' garage to a shop doing a $200k Porsche, we only got here because of our clients and our community. extremely grateful for the opportunity we have now 🙏🏽

09/06/2026

We checked on our client one year after their install, to see how it was holding up!

A black 2013 Highlander and a silver 2009 Tacoma, one year after we restored the paint on both, and permanently protected it with Icon Rocklear ™️. Angelo and Nancy brought us the cars in September 2024, and last September we drove out to their house to find out whether it was still worth it to them.

Making freshly coated cars look good under the showroom lights is the easy part. What matters is what a daily driver looks like a year later, parked outside, doing LA drives down i5 with all the bugs that come with it. So we started a series where we go to the client's house about a year later, wash the cars for free as a thank you, and ask them how the paint is still holding up.

Angelo's hesitation before he booked was an honest concern, is it going to deliver the look he saw on Instagram? His mechanic ended up answering part of that for him without knowing the car had been coated. "What did you do to your car?"

He also showed us fine scratches by the door handle, the spot everyone reaches for, and we talked through polishing them out of the coating while the paint underneath stays untouched. That part is in the video too, because a check-in where nothing is imperfect wouldn't be worth filming.

Thank you Angelo and Nancy for welcoming us to your home 🙏🏽

Comment YEAR1 and we'll send you the link to see the full visit!

07/06/2026

we almost never posted these.

august 2024, our clients Vue and Omar booked their clean S2000s, to get the paint protected with Rocklear.
of course we had to pull both finished cars into the showroom, and do a photoshoot together.

then the lighting that day betrayed us. background completely blown out, details lost to the shadows, so they say in a folder for almost two years because I genuinely thought it was unfixable.

finally a few weeks ago, we thought we'd ask Nathan Yang to take a crack at them. he blew away our expectations

young passionate photographers like Nathan, are the reason why AI will not be replacing true creative skill; at least not yet (and hopefully not in the future)

if you need clean automotive photo work in the bay, shoot him a DM! 🙏🏽

07/05/2026

Ferrari, Lambo, Porsche, Audi, Benz, and BMW, we got the whole continent here, it's another packed weekend at the shop, and somehow it turned into European week!

One moment that stuck with me: our client Ed brought in his brand new RS6 avant, and his wife happens to be my old elementary school principal. now she comes by with her husband, to the business I built in the same town I grew up in. life's full of these cool little full circle moments

A lot of returning faces came back with new cars this week! Norms came back with a new Model Y, after we coated his Model 3 last year, Andrew has trusted us with four Benzes since 2023, and Lou's family from last week's recap is already planning to do car #3. that part never gets old, it's not that we get paid again, it's that we did a good enough job the first time to earn that trust, and I consider that a privilege.

Thank you to everyone who trusted us with your cars this week, new faces and old! Swipe through, the story behind each one is on the photo

See you in the next recap 🙏🏽