I drive a fair amount between Florida and Georgia and aside from killing millions of Florida love bugs along the way; I also have picked up a number of small rock chips in the nose and bumper of my car. I’ve also curbed ( picked up curb rash) on some of my rims from awkward exits coupled with the unusually high and close curbs of the parking deck at my office.

Due to that, I had a few noticeable blemishes on the wheels and hood/grill area I wanted to clean up. Thankfully, I found an easy solution that worked well on my previous Orient Blue 325i. I surfed over to Bavarian Autosport and picked up some paint pens that color-matched my exterior paint and wheels. Search for “paint pens” then narrow it down by your year and model. The pens are a perfect color matches to the factory paint(the Silver Gray paint I used looked identical, even after the paint dried).

I picked up the Silver Gray pen which worked flawlessly and then a pen for “Silver Wheels” which cleans up any scratches on alloys(the color doesn’t match on gun metal colored wheels like the E46 M3’s 18 inch rims). The wheel paint works well as long as you’ve thoroughly cleaned the areas that are scratched/ chipped. In some cases you may find that you’ll need to put on one layer, let it dry for approximately thirty minutes then apply another. I did between two and three coats on the wheels while the rock chips on the nose of the car only required one or two. The wheels now look normal from 3 feet away and the rock chips seem to have evaporated from the nose of the car.

If you decide to use the paint pens, make sure to try and do it later in the day after thoroughly washing you car but before waxing it. You’ll want to attempt this out of direct sunlight to prevent the paint from not drying. Make sure to follow the instructions carefully and allow the pen to bleed into the pen tip before application. I also recommend having some paper towels handy just in case so that you don’t need to worry about any excess paint. In my opinion, this product does wonders for exterior paint, especially the darker colors, as it helps to hide any primer color revealed from rock chips. It’s also a good way to clean up rims in case you’ve chipped yours as well!