While preparing for the Porsche campaign (which is in the making, I hope):

What brand of paint are you folks using on cars?

and I guess you use nothing but gloss paints?

Haha! I think you just opened a can of worms

I use enamels for exterior finishes, mainly Krylon and/or Rust-oleum. I use MM enamel primer (with Rust-oleum as substitute when I need a fancy color). In rare occasions I used Testors lacquer. For clear coat (the most important thing in auto modelling in my opinion) I use normally commercial polyurethane. I just tried yesterday Klear Kote from Alclad and I was impressed - it might become my lacquer of choice - still experiencing with.
For semi-gloss / satin finishes I use the same polyurethane.
For 'leather' finishes I use matte acrylics + rich oil washes.
For interiors I use mainly craft acrylics, easy to tweak.
For metallic finishes I use Alclads for airbrushing or MM silver when applied by brush.

Those are my preferences. I'm not saying they're the best
For one-coat gloss finish the best results I had with Rust-oleum. For multi-coat gloss finish the best results I had with Krylon

I hope this helps and I didn't throw you into confusion

Gabriel

For components, like engine, interior, undercarriage, basically anything other than the body, I use acrylics(AK-interactive, Vallejo, Ammo), Humbrol enamels and spray cans of any kind.

For the body I use Humbrol enamels(Air-brush), Tamiya spray paints or any hardware store spray paint with the right color.

Body work mostly in gloss paints, but not exclusively. I have painted a Corvette in flat black and gloss coated that one. It really depends on, what you want to build. An old rust bucket would not look rigth in super gloss.

Forgot about oil's. I use them for weathering and leather/wood work

There are actually a few different types of paints that I use. A few are Tamiya spray paints & acrylics and Model Master enamels & acrylics. For airbrushing, I use a lot of Gravity Colors, Splash Paints and Zero Paints. These paints are often times color matched for specific cars.

Detail parts, engine and interior etc I use acrylic Vallejo/Ammo/Lifecolor, hairy stick.

Main interior, either acrylics (as above) or Zero paints or both depending what’s needed, windy stick.

Body, I’m trying Zero paints which are colour matched to the car manufacturers colour code including special colours and mica/candy finishes, windy stick.

Gloss coat, not tried it yet but I have the Zero paints two pack gloss coat, windy stick.

I also use Mr. Metal and AK for the main engine block or large areas that need to be steel, iron, aluminium etc, windy stick.

Coloured lights, Tamiya clear.

Example of some of my Zero paints, the ‘Battlefield 1’ is a two part candy finish which is applied over a metallic base.

Drabslab,
I use Mig Ammo & Tamiya paints for all the detail and non body gloss color(s). For my Metallic paints I'm a Alcad II guy. For clear coats, I still use Testors Dullcoat and Glosscoat for everything but the body, and the pit. If I need to seal any Metalizers, I use Testors ModelMaster Sealer for Metalizers.
For gloss painted surfaces I use Mr. Color Gloss Clear thinned with their leveling Thinner.

As for the gloss paints, I've used MCW paints on the Porsche 917K, the Lotus Type 72E will be painted with Zero paints (I've had them for several years), but I've switched to Gravity/Spain as my current go to car Lacquer paint.

Joel

I've used Tamiya spray paint on my car kit bodies for years now. Once fully cured they can be sanded and buffed to a mirror like shine. What I do is basically the same thing a custom paint shop would do with a real car and build up a few coats of color and smooth it out some with progessively finer grits of sandpaper (3000 to 12,000) then repeat the process until I get the finish I want. You can coat that with Tamiya gloss using the same process if you want to build in a little extra protection. It's a time consuming process, but the results are worth it. These paints being lacquers are very hard and durable. Care must be taken when sanding around sharp edges and corners where the paint is the thinnest.