Soft paint on 80s Ferraris?

The paint on the nose of my 328 looks like a moonscape. It's down to the red undercoat and bare metal in places from the rock chips, and the hood vents look sandblasted. All this, and the car only has 71,000 miles on it.

My pickup has 166,000 miles on it, and isn't nearly as bad. I understand that the truck's higher off the ground, but surely the Ferrari paint should be holding up better.

Is this typical of higher mileage cars? It really didn't look bad 20 months ago, but that was also almost 19,000 miles ago. Other than one of those clear adhesive sheets, is there any way to protect the paint while still using the car?

 

Yes, our paint is bad.

My car has only 17,000 Miles, and I have chips like would not believe. I seem to get at least one more every time I drive. Our paint is far to thin to even be called paint.

All I know is to watch your driving habits to minimize rocks kicked up. I tend to never tailgate even remotely, and try to keep at least 2 or 3 car lengths on the highway. In city I reduce this to 1.5 car lengths. Even at lights I say far behind people in front of me. (People like to use this as an excuse to cut me off though.) No one ever asks why I am doing this, and if they did any cop with half a 'car guy' inside of him would understand.

I am going to add a clear guard behind the rear wheels where the kick up is most significant. (In my experience)