Sooo... Brought some black polish last weekend to see if it would mask some of the imperfections... I was really impressed, its basically the equivelant of colour magic but the shop I went to didnt have any of the 'real' stuff.
So it looks 10x shinier, doesn't show stone chips from about 10 miles away (you have to be within a metre or so's range to see any sign of them) and overall I'm very happy
The front end and rear bumper will be getting sprayed at some point, its just finding time off work to book it in!
Also cleaned my mates Scooby while we were at it... (me being a knob behind it... was a combo of trying to push it along like a shopping trolly, and just get in the way of the photo lol).. JDM import STi though, so its not slow
Couldn't deal with 18-22mpg though