Why do plastics go grey?

Most plastic trim on cars is a polymer based ABS plastic, that is not capable of withstanding long term UV and environmental exposure. You can spot this type of plastic on most later model cars, as it's essentially unsealed, usually black in colour and moulded for grills, light surrounds, windscreen cowls, side mirrors etc. This type of material slowly degrades over time thanks to "photo-degradation" by the suns' UV rays slowly breaking down the bonds of the plastics polymers. From this you get the material slowly going grey, cracking, chalking, bleaching, and a general loss of how it looked when it was new.  

Plastic manufacturers have tried to prevent this by placing UV stabilisers and absorbers in their plastics, however if the plastics are not regularly maintained they will still degrade, as we have seen in many high UV areas throughout Australia. And even worse, once this process begins, it is very hard to slow or stop. Thankfully, it is quite easy to prevent with regular maintenance, using a specialised product our chemists have newly created for the job - Vinyl Revival