Protection packages are a way for dealers to make up for low margins on vehicles. They typically cost the dealer something like $25 and 15min of labor and they get to charge the customer $500.
While they do put
something on the car they mainly function as an insurance policy. With OEM finishes lasting 10 years+ an most people trading in cars in less than seven it's a pretty good bet for the underwriter, especially when most people forget about it the second they drive off the lot.
Read the fine print (there's always very fine print) and assume that the chemicals are no better than what you can pick up at Wallyworld. If you think what you get is worth your money, go for it. I never will, but there are a lot of things that I would never buy that others are happy to.
"3M Paint Protection Film" does seem to offer some useful protection..../ / ..... but a friend of mine bought a new Lotus Elise that came with it from the factory and it did appear to help protect the paint from the usual tiny chips and erosion common to low slung cars. OTOH, after what seemed to be a relatively minor fender bender, replacing it supposedly added some $4000 to the repair cost.....
Yikes! Was the entire car wrapped?
If it was just the usual places, nose, partial hood and wheel skirts, my guess is a) they didn't want to do it and gave an outlandish price so they wouldn't have to (but would laugh all the way to the bank if they did) or b) There were multiple middle-men looking for a cut and expecting some insurance company to spring for it.
PPF's are great for avoiding paint chips. But they tend to scratch, can be difficult (or impossible) to polish out, turn yellow over time and eventually crack and fuse themselves to the paint. Like everything else in life. You make your own trade-offs as you see fit.
...Are there any actual useful and effective long-term exterior paint protectors out there, to put on a new car? Maguires, Mothers, 3M, etc. Are they any better than regular wash and wax?....
Protectants generally fall into one three categories, waxes, synthetic sealants and coatings. But there is overlap and there is
zero consistency in nomenclature between different manufacturers or even within a given manufacturer's product range.
We all know waxes. They can be natural or synthetic or some combination. They commonly last from days to weeks depending on the product, environment and wash cycles. Synthetic sealants usually (but not always) apply much like wax and last somewhat longer, maybe weeks to months depending.
Coatings are the new thing and all the rage in some circles. They create a film that's thicker than waxes' or sealants'. I vaguely recall hearing (but maybe not) that some are even measurable with sensitive paint thickness gauges (while wax films are only a handful of molecules deep). They are much tougher than waxes and can last years. They have their own difficulties, sometimes getting defects that can only be removed by removing and re-applying the coating (but hey, if they prevent damage to the paint they did their job).
Coatings are much, much more expensive than waxes and some are only available for professional application.
By and large, if you keep your finish clean and apply some sort of protection regularly, it should last a long time.
On daily drivers I tend to use synthetic sealants because they're easy to apply and last reasonably long. Sometimes I'll use a traditional wax, just for fun. For a garaged weekend car I doubt it makes much difference which you use.
I haven't tried any coatings yet (unless you count Meguiar's Ultimate Fast Finish, which is sort of half way between a sealant and a coating, but I think of it as more of a super sealant). I'm too cheap and haven't had any long term experience around any coated cars yet. Maybe someday.
Autogeek's Mike Phillips likes to use the words of a PPG rep he used to work with, "find something you like and use it often."