How do you know if you have good paint or bad?

As the title how do you tell if you have bad or good paint.

I don't mean chips and scratches.

I've not put a depth gauge on my cars paint. But I think my paint is terrible, it scratches easy too. I don't know if this is because it is black (shows everything) or whether it is because the paint is not good.

I have polished the car with a medium cut, lighter cut, quick polish with finishing polish and then hand polishing it using finishing polish. After this waxed it to seal it by hand.

My next course I'm going to do is clay bar the entire car and then use a deeper cut polish and basically do a 3 stage polish with wax. After giving it a 2 bucket wash before claying and polishing.

I only ask if the paint work is bad because I've no clue. I'm in 2 minds is it worth getting it professional detailed but if the paint is bad then is this a pointless act?

If the paints bad I will live with it once I'm in the position to get a full respray. As the car is driven a fair amount at the moment because I absolutely love it. SRD have made this and absolute beast I'm not overly fussed about not having the paint at show car condition but it is annoying me as I love a clean shiny car.

Any help on determining would be appreciated and any recommendations on what the best course of action would be

depends what it was painted with (if its not original) although japanese paint is often considered the "softest" with german manufacturers using the "hardest" of paints. So there is 100% differences between products used.

When i had mine repainted they used a "Crystal" lacquer which is meant to be pretty hard and its going well so far.

You'd be best probably at least taking it to a professional detailer for their opinion.

Edit - If you're worried about softer paint you could have it detailed then have a ceramic coating applied. There are even self healing ceramic coatings available these days.

The paint on these cars are soft you need to clay bar 1st then compound, polish, wax mate should come up ok

if you plan on doing a strip , and the a 3 stage get a guage and check what youve got to work with

BMW use a scratch resistant ceramic clear coat which is where the 'germans harder paint' comes in to the equation. Japanese have standard clearcoat, possibly even none compliant by uk standards but that's only about application.

We use whatever the customer wants to use, ceramic clear, nanotechnology super scratch resistant, crystal clears, standard high quality compliant scratch resistant. Just depends what you want to pay as clear coat and hardener can cost a lot.

Cheers guys. Great info. Possibly will get this to a detailer and see what there opinion is. Hopefully storkin on here. Or someone closer as I don't know any I trust in Bournemouth.