Another paint question

After seeing lots of threads about clearcoat failure I find myself wondering whether old paint finishes lasted longer. I'm in my seventies, and dont recall seing the surface failures that we see with clearcoats these days.
I remember I had an uncle with a Vauxhall (remember those?) that had been polished so much that he had worn down through to the undercoat which still had a nice sheen because of all the polish he had put on. Maybe it was enamel paint on that 1950's car.

I'm thinking about cars that had laquer paint jobs, they still had clearcoats, but the paint was pretty much the same chemistry as the clear topcoat, the way you could increase the clear content on the last coats could give a great depth of colour on the fancier paints.
I seem to recall that if the surface began to fail, it could be remedied for a fairly long time by cutting and polishing.

Enough of a ramble, did those laquer topcoats last longer, or is it just the sepia tinting of the past in my memory that is misleading me?

I understand why the chemistry changed, VOC's and all that, I just wonder if the quality changed with it.
What say the experts?

Well our 28 yo Primera which has never been garaged still has perfect clear coat apart from the area that was repaired after a supermarket ding.
Don't know what that tells us though.

I think it tells us that there is a lot of inconsistency in the quality of clearcoat application and performance.

One major change is in the chemical composition of a lot of modern paints. Going back further it was all "paint" -not clear coat over paint so cutting back to a polish was a doable thing

I thought it was all to do with the UV additives in the clearcoat. So imports that hadn't been painted with NZ UV levels in mind would have a hard time here.

You can paint a solid 2k colour I'm told, but it's not as durable as clear coat. It tends to go chalky after a while.

My 1989 Telstar still looked new when I gave it to someone who apparently crashed it.

I'm sorry but your post made me laugh.
The way it reads you think that there are cars painted a certain way for New Zealand conditions.
We are honestly a pimple on the backside of the world for the car manufacturers. A years worth of one make/model for NZ would take about 2 minutes