Anything actually do it fairly well?

The hood/deck of my car are a bit hazy, I went over the hood with meguire's cleaning wax and then scratch x (scratch x first really didn't do anything, but applying it after the cleaning wax gave a fairly significant improvement...)

The finish no longer feels like chalk and is a bit shinier (it reflects SOME light now but...)

well, there must be something better Short of a new paint job (it'll be in the next ten years, and almost certainly be yellow/orange/lime green) but for now I'm not too concerned with looks beyond polishing so...

What product should I purchase to do this?

I use the Meguiars cleaner wax and Meguiars Color X. I use a small Ryobi orbital applicator to apply them, however. The more you go over it, the better it gets.

Might not be a matter of the polishing/waxing products you are using - so much as it is the paint itself.

The answer really depends on what paint your talking about - it's age and condition etc. If it's the original factory enamel, on a metallic color - your clear coat could be going bad. Enamel drys with a skin coat of solids on the top layer - once you've polished your way through that - the paint will not hold a shine for more than a couple weeks. So you don't want to use anything that is too harsh, or that would remove too much of that skin coat.

Lacquers will usually polish up and hold a shine, right down to the primer under them.. that is not the case with the older enamels.

FWIW,

Carl B.

I'm afraid of buffing through the 15 year old maaco paint, which does have to go at some point, but must stick around a bit and look at least decent for now... Not sure what sort of paint this is, but there appears not to be a clearcoat... or else it'd probably look a lot worse by now.