i want to reinforce that painting might not be your only option-- detailing might be plenty worthwhile.
i understand wanting to keep the car nice, but unless the car is parked in a nitrogen-sealed bubble, as long as it's out in the world, it's going to get further damaged in some way.
first a story with no pictures:
i've got some family friends, they proudly bought their first brand new truck ever about 2 years ago. 3 months after getting it, we all went camping, and the brand new truck ended up parked under a walnut tree. walnut trees where the squirrels brutally attacked anything parked under it every morning for 2-3 hours at a time. it was like hail, but louder somehow.
so their 3 month old truck ended up with a number of dents from those viscous attacks. after taking it to a paintless dent repair place, they reported 19 dents. i could never make out more than 3. they chose to have all the dents repaired, to the tune of $2500.
a few weeks after having all of that repaired, they were picking up the mother in law to go out to a nice dinner, and accidentally drove straight into a handicapped sign pylon they didn't see, denting the chrome bumper.
now a (shorter) story with a few pictures!:
very long story short, my first brz was totaled after 4 months. i'm on my second brz. this second one, i was pulling out of a grocery store, turning left across 2 lanes of traffic. the closer lane had a large suv that turned into the same lot, so i never saw the small car in the second lane until it was too close, and i was already across both lanes. so i gunned it the best i could, but it still clipped my bumper. it left me with a reminder. the car is about as dirty as yours in this first picture, so it looks much worse than it is.
i've been avoiding getting it repaired due to some other body work i want done, so i tried buffing it out because i had nothing to lose.
this is how it came out after clay barring, buffing, and wax.
