XPEL Paint Protection Film in Larchmont, NY

Larchmont is about eight minutes down the Post Road from us, which means most of our Larchmont film customers drop the car in the morning and are back on the 7:42 the next day without having thought about it again. It is also one of the toughest environments for paint in lower Westchester, for reasons that have nothing to do with how anyone drives.

Three things, all specific to Larchmont

Salt air. Larchmont Manor, Horseshoe Harbor, Manor Park and everything south of the Post Road sit directly on Long Island Sound. Salt-laden air settles on horizontal panels and stays there between washes, and in combination with summer UV it degrades clearcoat measurably faster than the same parking loted two miles inland. We see it as early hood and roof dulling on cars that are otherwise immaculate. This is the reason we talk about ceramic coating with Larchmont owners more than with almost anyone else — it is a chemical problem, and film alone does not solve a chemical problem.

The station lot. A large share of Larchmont cars spend nine hours a day outdoors at the Metro-North lot, under mature trees, from Monday to Friday. That is sap, bird droppings and pollen baked on by the afternoon sun, five days a week, for years. Sap and droppings are acidic and they etch. A car that commutes by rail from Larchmont takes more chemical damage sitting still than most cars take driving.

The Manor streets. The lanes south of the Post Road were laid out long before cars were this wide. Stone gateposts, curbs set high, narrow driveway entrances, and hedges grown out over the pavement edge. Rocker panels, lower doors and the outer face of the front wheel arch take the brunt. It is the classic reason a Larchmont car needs more than a nose package.

Add the ordinary regional background — I-95 exit 17 traffic, winter sand off the Post Road, and loose aggregate for weeks after every village resurfacing — and you have a car that is being attacked from three directions at once.

What we fit on Larchmont cars

The starting point is a full front in XPEL Ultimate Plus — complete bumper, complete hood, full fenders, mirrors and headlights, with no line across the hood. The topcoat is self-healing, so light wash swirls close up in warm weather rather than accumulating.

For a Manor car we add rockers, lower doors, rear wheel arches and door edges as a matter of course. For a commuter car that lives at the station we push hard on ceramic coating over the film, because slick, hydrophobic paint is what stops sap and droppings sitting long enough to etch. For a Sound-side car we treat the hood and roof as the priority rather than an afterthought.

If your car has a matte or frozen factory finish, STEALTH film is the answer — that paint cannot be polished, so protecting it is the only option. For color change we use XPEL COLOR film rather than vinyl: eight mil, self-healing, sixteen gloss and satin finishes, a ten-year warranty, and it protects the paint underneath rather than simply hiding it. Vinyl at three to four mil is a two to three year product and does neither.

What happens before the film goes on

Whatever is in the paint when the film goes on stays there. On a Larchmont car that has done two winters at the station lot, there is usually something — etching from sap, water spotting, wash marks from a hurried mitt. We decontaminate and inspect every car under proper lighting and correct the paint where it needs it, because film over defects preserves them and looks worse than nothing.

Because we are a collision facility, not a detail business, the harder cases stay in one building. A chip through to primer, a bumper resprayed elsewhere, a panel that genuinely needs repainting first — all of that happens here, on a cure schedule we control, and the film goes on when the paint is actually ready. If a filmed car later takes a hit, we repair the panel and reinstate the film properly.

New cars, before the first drive

If you are taking delivery of something, the ideal time to film it is before it has been driven at all. We are close enough to the Westchester dealer network that going straight from delivery to us is easy, and paint that has never met a stone or a wash mitt is the best substrate there is.

Everything else, same visit

We also do collision repair for Larchmont, with factory certifications for Land Rover, Jaguar, Rivian, Genesis, Infiniti, Nissan, Kia and Stellantis, and we repair every other premium marque in the area. Ceramic coating, window film, paint correction, wheel refinishing and caliper work are all in the same building, so the car leaves once and comes back done.

Booking it

Send photos and tell us what you drive, where it lives and how you use it, or just bring it down. We will tell you what we would cover on your car and what we would leave alone. There is no benefit to us in selling you film you do not need.

Enthusiast Auto Works, 55B Plain Ave, New Rochelle, NY 10801. (914) 630-1668. We are an XPEL Certified Installer and a full collision repair facility, and we repair exclusively with OEM parts.

More on film: Paint protection film across Westchester, Fairfield and Bergen County

Services: XPEL paint protection film · STEALTH satin PPF · color change with PPF · ceramic coating · window film · windshield protection film · paint correction · collision repair