It’s hard to pass up on the first polish I made. I still have my handwritten notes from 12/16/1985 to 2/19/1986. The code name for the project was Superlite but became Ultracoat Polish. The idea was to create a very fast one-step paint polish for NEW basecoat/clearcoat paint presenting problems in the industry.
At the time, liquid polishes had a well deserved reputation creating swirls and for staining paints when directly applied to the paint. Obviously, we wanted to fix this issue along with addressing swirls marks prevalent with rotary polishing. Clear coats presented a new problem. Swirls were everywhere on new cars due to lack of understanding of how to polish clearcoats. My goal was to build a product to remove swirls quickly and leave a clear polished surface even after the protection was gone. The main criteria was to build a product that did fast, light paint correction, leave a fairly durable protection and have excellent gloss for new car delivery. And work on the new clearcoat technology. At the time Carnauba Wax was the gold standard.
So, yeah, I had never made a polish before but … was up to the challenge. When I look back I’m surprised at the number of directions I tried to create a solution. Some of them were pretty creative. Ultimately with a ton of testing and a little luck I was able to create Ultracoat Polish. We still product Ultracoat today and still melt carnauba wax based on the original formula and build our own emulsions for use in Kyle’s, Ultracoat Polish, Cherry Speed Wax and Carnauba Crème Wax.
It’s a little known fact that somewhere during one of these product building experiments, I got my hair caught in the lab mixer and had about a square inch of hair ripped out of my scalp. Fortunately, it grew back but not before my barber told me it might not or it could grow back gray, you never know. These were fun times.
