Having scratches on your car can be frustrating, but it happens pretty often; tree branches, bushes, keys, shopping carts, other car's doors - all those things can leave scratches on your car's finish. Some scratches are very minor and some are deep; sometimes a residue from another object can look like a scratch and in each case the repair is different. It's best to repair scratches especially the deep ones where the bare metal is exposed, as soon as they appear, before the corrosion starts. Once the exposed in the scratch metal gets corroded, it's a whole different story and much more complicated repair. Let's see what can be done with the scratches.
How to repair deep scratches
 Deep scratches like this one, on the edge of the door, can be repaired with a touch-up paint. If you look closely, this scratch goes all the way through the clear coat, base paint and the primer (the grey stuff) and you can see the bare metal in the middle. This scratch will get corroded if not repaired in time, so I'm going to repair it. First thing I need is a matching touch up paint. |
 To get the matching touch-up paint I called my local dealer's parts department, they told me where the color code is located on this car - it was on the manufacturer's label on the driver's door jamb. I got the code from there and ordered the touch-up paint. The color code could be located in different places on different cars, but your dealer's part department should be able to tell you where is it. |
 The touch-up paint in this case comes as a two-tipped pen with base color paint on one end and the clear coat on the other. You can check if it has the same paint color code to make sure. |
 The car is clean and dry. Before using the touch-up pen, as it' said in the directions on the pen I have to shake it well. |
 As this pen's tip is too thick for this scratch, I'm going to use a sharp toothpick instead. So I squeeze a small amount of the base color paint from the touch-up pen into a bottle cap. |
 Now I dip the sharp toothpick into the paint. I need to pick-up a very small drop of paint on a toothpick. |
 Now very accurately I'm trying to barely fill up the scratch without letting the paint to come out of the scratch. |
 It's not perfect, but it looks much better now and it won't get corroded. Later, when the paint dries up I will add the layer of the clear coat from the other end of the touch-up pen (Instructions are on the pen). |
How to remove minor scratches
 These minor scratches were made by the bushes. This car has no clear coat as it's non-metallic color. The paint is scratched only slightly with no deep damage. To repair this scratch I'm just going to polish the paint. |
 I put small amount of the polishing compound onto the damp sponge applicator and gently polish the scratched area with it. After a little while I wash the are off to see if the scratch is still visible. I don't want to remove too much paint with the polishing compound. If the scratch is still there I polish it a bit more. Try in a small area first, it's important not to overdo it. |
 Once the scratch is barely noticeable, I wash and dry the area and use a regular car wax to make it shiny. |
 Here is the result, unless you look very closely, the scratches are not visible anymore |