A last-chance, step-by-step guide to fixing a scratch on your car

When it was new — before scratches.Matthew DeBord/Business Insider

You can live with scratches on your car — but you shouldn’t.

Scratches are like the old torture of death by a thousand cuts. Eventually, they’ll destroy your car’s finish by allowing rust to develop on metal parts. And like the great Canadian poet said, rust never sleeps.

Neil Young references aside, I recently suggested two ways to repair scratches. While I was dispensing this basic advice, it occurred to me that I had some scratches on my own car, a 2011 Toyota Prius, that needed attending to, certainly as winter arrived in the Northeast, where I live.

We’ve had some snow and cold, but so far, winter has been mild. So you have a little extra time to do some last-chance scratch repair before the nasty weather really sets in.

I kind of split the difference between my two earlier scratch repair techniques: I didn’t use tape; and I didn’t go for a perfect fix.

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