History
Ceramic coatings didn't start life on cars. The chemistry came out of industrial and aerospace work, where the priority was durability and resistance to heat, chemicals and wear -- not gloss. This section looks at how those early formulations were adapted for modern automotive clear coats, and why today's ceramic coatings do what they do.
From factory floor to car bodywork
The core ingredient in most automotive coatings is SiO₂ (silicon dioxide), often carried in a siloxane matrix. That chemistry was in use long before anyone thought of applying it to paintwork -- on turbine blades, cookware, and industrial machinery where a thin, hard, bonded layer had to survive conditions that would wreck a polymer sealant or a conventional wax.
Bringing that formulation onto car paint meant solving different problems: adhesion to a modern clear coat, a workable cure time, a finish that looked good rather than just performed well, and something a detailer could actually apply without industrial equipment. Early automotive coatings were stiff, unforgiving and easy to ruin. Later generations traded some of that raw hardness for hydrophobic behaviour, gloss and ease of use -- which is what most customers are really paying for.
Understanding that progression matters because it explains what a coating can and cannot realistically do. Marketing language like "9H" and "fills scratches" comes from this history being half-told. The articles below fill in the rest.
Forty years of coatings -- a workshop perspective
Gary, New Again's co-founder, was applying paint protection products as a self-employed detailer from the early 1980s; long before the industry used the word "ceramic" for anything connected to cars. The products he worked with then were polymer sealants: Bigin (later rebranded as Supagard), Total Protection by AutoClenz, and a product called Lacroe, which became JewelUltra Diamondbrite. These weren't coatings in any meaningful sense -- they were wax-adjacent sealants, sold largely on the back of dealership relationships and applied by hand.
Through the 1990s and into the 2000s the range of products expanded. Toughgard, Toughseal and A-Glaze all had their moment; Diamondbrite had a long run through the dealer channel. The underlying chemistry hadn't changed much, though. Protection still meant a polymer film that would last a season or two and needed renewing. Longevity claims were creative.
The shift came when Danny travelled to Sweden and encountered Ditec, a Scandinavian coating brand with a noticeably different approach. An attempt to bring it to the UK as a franchise didn't come together, but it changed what we were looking for. In around 2006 we had a demonstration from Gtechniq; the product was, genuinely, like glass -- hard, optically clear, unlike anything we'd seen applied to a car. We turned it down: difficult to apply, expensive, and not yet practical for a working workshop. But the category had arrived.
By 2010 the picture had shifted. The formulation behind that 2006 demo had continued on a separate path under the name MaxProtect; we also evaluated Gen-3. We went with MaxProtect. It remained a demanding product in application, and working with the supplier proved difficult, so we eventually moved to Fireball -- a Korean brand whose products were more practical without sacrificing performance. When Autosmart released their own coating, that was hard to pass up. A period of supply disruption from Fireball led us to SiRamik's range to bridge the gap. Fireball are back now with a new range, and that's where we've settled.
The reason this history matters: we've applied, evaluated and rejected more formulations than most detailers have heard of. When we recommend a product, it's because we've watched it perform on real cars over real time.
Where to go next
- Why are ceramic coatings popular? -- what's driving customer demand and how much of it is marketing.
- When did ceramic coatings become popular? -- the timeline from industrial use to mainstream detailing.
- Where are ceramic coatings made? -- the handful of countries that actually formulate them, and why origin matters less than you'd think.
Related
- Glossary -- full A-Z of car-care terms, including the entries covering ceramic coatings, graphene and polymer sealants.
- Long-term ceramic coating solutions -- how these formulations are used on real customer cars.