I'll clarify: washing is pointless in my case (very tongue in cheek) due to the road that I drive on every day. It is a series of potholes connected in places by asphalt. Yes, I do wash my car in reality. Probably once every couple of weeks. But it spends very little time actually looking like I washed it recently....
Now wax, and no tongue in cheek here: On a car with good paint and clearcoat, wax does not and cannot "protect" paint. It's a WAX. Wax is not airtight (so it cannot prevent oxidation), it is not hard (so it is easily removed by airborne abrasives). Heck, most waxes have to be reapplied after a good washing or 2...how tough is that?
Wax on a good paint/clearcoat car is purely to make it shine. It fills micro-scratches and such and improves the gloss level of a surface by removing the top oxidized layers of older clearcoats. (Wax fills microscratches, polish removes oxides and can smooth/remove microscratches). A clay bar is a very mild polish.
If you have no clearcoat, or it is worn off (it does) and it's all the protection you can get, to that end it's fine and serves a use (and therefore in those cases might be slightly more than cosmetic. In those cases I recant my original blanket statement).
But it's NOT a clearcoat, ie, not airtight and hard/abrasion resistant enough; and can't be expected to protect like a clearcoat.
My clearcoat is in great shape, it has been reapplied several times in the life of the car, I don't need to wax unless I want the car to be shiney. Shiney that is until I drive it to work.....
I know this is an unpopular stance amongst hobbyists here but it simply fact. If you like to wax your car, I have absolutely no issue with your desire to have shiney car. That is, until you try to claim it "protects" anything. Now if you sell wax, or sell your services waxing cars, be forewarned I don't listen to salesmen.
If you want to protect your paint, have it re-clearcoated. If you want it shiney, wax it.
(flamesuit on)
