Here is my take on coating life/durability...
Regardless of the claims made by the manufacturer of being 'permanent' or not, these coatings will be MUCH more durable than a traditional form of protection (when applied to a properly prepped surface).
In all reality, no matter how careful you are with your vehicle, it will need to be polished every couple of years (speaking generally for daily drivers). For this reason, I do not care if a coating
can last 10 years or not - there is no way I will be going more than 2 years without polishing my car at which point the coating will either be fully removed, or at least greatly diminished and will need to be coated again.
Before someone chimes in and says "well I'd rather just apply a sealant every 4-6 months instead of
waste so much money on a coating that I will have to reapply eventually anyways" you need to understand a couple more things.
1) A tube of opti-coat is 20cc (many other coatings are sold in 20cc-50cc bottles)... a car the size of a Honda civic will use maybe 4-6cc's of the coating when applied properly. You may use "too much" on your first time since you won't have your process fully figured out yet.
2) You can coat 4+ average vehicles with one tube of OC2.0 which equates to about $20/vehicle which, while still more expensive than a sealant, is WAY worth it for the added protection and ease of maintenance.
3) These coatings are harder than the traditional clear coat will be (varies depending on vehicle type and color) and therefore offer a level of resistance to light swirls and marring... something no traditional form of protection can claim.
4) The protection is just far superior than any sealant or wax. Last year I coated 1/2 of my trunk and treated the other 1/2 with a traditional sealant. It took the un-coated side less than 1 day after a rain storm to have light etchings from water spots that needed to be polished, while the coating (22ple VX1 Pro in this scenario) was just fine. Keep in mind that these coatings are far from bulletproof... I did leave water spots on my car for a couple of weeks just to "see what happened" and yeah - they sure as heck etched the coating lol so proper maintenance is still required!
I could throw up many other reasons these coatings are "worth it", but I think you're getting the idea... and I'm supposed to be working right now :dblthumb2:
Anything that can be polished off, is not, IMO, permanent. ....
Look at it from another point of view... are swirls permanent? IMO - yes... if swirls are left uncorrected, they surely aren't going to disappear on their own. They can be polished and removed, but only by physically removing the entire layer of paint in which they reside.