You really need to inspect under some form of light sunlight is the best form in order to really tell what kind of shape the paint is in.My corvette is a garage queen but vettes seem to attract swirls no matter how carefull you are .There clear coats scratch easy and are a bear to correct .I would take some pictures and post them to get some opinion's just my 2 cents
I agree.
Without bright sunlight bearing down on the paint on a sunny day or a Swirl Finder light you don't really know the true condition of the paint.
And even with all the new generation polishers and polishes on the market hard clear coat finishes still require a little patience, perspiration passion to bring them to show car quality.
Interestingly enough, many people don't know what swirls are nor they are an unwanted characteristic in their car's paint.
A few months ago I met a guy with a brand new paint job on his customer 1955 Chevy Pick-up Truck, this truck was magazine quality all the way and he was pretty proud of the paint job.
That's why I hated showing him the finish was completely swirled out with rotary buffer swirls. He didn't know how to look at the surface withe sun in just the right place to highlight all the swirls. After I showed him, he was all sad because he though he was done with the truck and because he paid a lot of money for the customer yellow pearl paint job.
At the time I didn't have the time to buff out his truck so I let him borrow my DA Polisher, gave him a few lessons on how to use it and in about a month he returned with a show car finish. He said after he left my house that day he went home and washed and dried his black Jaguar and then pulled it out into the sun and to his surprise, it was all swirled out too.
Both paint jobs were swirled-out messes and both the truck and the Jaguar are what you would consider high-end, special interest cars and he would consider himself a "Car Guy". But he still didn't know what swirls were or how much they bugged him until someone showed him how to see them and how much they took away from the beauty of the car.
That's where this old saying comes in,
"Each one teach one"
I would never say your buddies Corvette is swirled out as I have never seen it and from your description it probably isn't, but experience has shown me that one man's ceiling is another man's floor.
If person doesn't know how to inspect for swirls using the sun, or if they don't own a Swirl Finder Light and know how to use it, then it could be they have a great finish or it could be they don't, they just don't know it. But again, with only 870 miles you would expect it to look pretty good unless it came with DISO
