Caveats: unless it's a race car, the paint is hopeless, it's a delivery van or a domino's pizza truck. Then sure.
Otherwise, dumbest idea we ever had, and costly too..
We decided to try a wrap, as my wife never liked the black color of her Q7 which showed multitudes of scratches, and it cost 1/4 of a paint job (especially a color change) and 1/15th of buying her another car. Still not cheap at $4K + coating. I can see why, there is a lot of labor taking bumper, trim, lights, reflectors, handles apart... We were told you put some ceramic coat on it and wash it often and it should last 4-5Y. We went Nardo grey, it looked fantastic for about 3 months...
Ok, so disclaimer - my wife isn't exactly a car washing person but regardless, the stuff acted very porous from the get go. Pollen, bird poop, anything yellow/brown stuck to all horizontal surfaces and would not come off at all if not caught within minutes. Car sleeps outside. 15 mo later, we're impersonating the AfrikaKorps, specifically Rommel's personal transport.
Yeah that stuff is there to stay, does not come off - at all, clorox is the only thing that can do 50% off (on inconspicuous areas) but not exactly something you'd put on your car. The car looks abysmal, so off we go asking how much to pull the thing off... Because of course, the 2 y warranty does not apply if you do not keep the car in a air purified chamber dust free with 10x coats of ceramic a year... it's our fault apparently that the wrap is completely porous...
The installer refuses to quote any time for undoing - it takes what it takes at $60 an hour, "and also some paint may come with", some clear coat repairs from previous insurance repairs apparently are more susceptible to coming off... Nice. He doesn't even wanna commit to anything... None of the above was mentioned at wrap time obviously.
So the 2x Kids and I did it in about 12 hours (3 people - well call it 2 people for real on average) just for the wrap, including figuring out how all the trim/bumpers/lights/moldings come off (thank you youtube) - our fingers felt like hamburger meat. Heat gun helps at 60C - no more no less.. but that then required another 10 hours just of GLUE removal... because all the edges of the wrap left the glue substrate on the car... on ALL the edges, roof, sunroof, trunk, doors, moldings, every damn edge. 7th circle of hell.
The products to remove glue work very well and do not hurt the clear, but not as expected - they dissolve it well but it needs to be rubbed off hard and it makes clumps that ..... just re-spread further, and never stick to the microfiber nor the paper towels (riskier). So you end up pushing balls of sticky glue all around the car until finally it adheres to the towel on the 10th push, wasting 2 dozens microfibers in the process (forget washing that crap off)...
Finally I pulled the clearcoat in 2 places (previous repaint spot as forecast) that will need wet sanding and reclear, and the lower trim the wrap guy had sanded down and never painted and never told us, so I have to repaint that too... probably why he was cagey about wrap removal !
In conclusion, like the intro, wrap is for race cars, delivery trucks, and possibly brand new cars if you are a masochist or bought the wrong color. Under no circumstances should you try that as an alternative to paint of a used car. It's a trap !!!