Dan suggested I ask in this forum, so here's a cross-post from Problems/Fixes Forums Cross-Post

Well, something's seriously messed up on my hood. It looked like something dripped on it from somewhere, and I have no idea where that would have happened. It snowed on Saturday so the car got quite dirty & salty over the weekend, but like a good boy I took it to the wash today, a high end one. Just after I noticed where it looked like something ran down the hood of my car. It's kind of a white or clear, looks to me like it could've been ultra salty water, gas (not likely) or paint thinner. It appeared largely on top of the paint and you could carefully scratch some of it off, but it's all cloudy underneath. I removed the stickyish hard stuff by lightly scubbing it, but the underlying cloudyness was still there. Getting it all wet makes it look basically like normal, then wiping off the water makes it look cloudy again. I wonder if it took off the clear coat somehow.

The below link shows a picture, it's the best one I could take with my camera and it really does look very noticeable, unlike in the picture.
Big Unhappy Pic of TSX

Does anyone have any ideas of what I should do? I really can't afford to repaint the whole hood, so I hope there's something less expensive that I could do. Thanks for any help!!

 

Do you have a Porter Cable ? try some #80, that should clear her up....Make sure you seal afterwards though....

 

Thanks for the advice, both here and on the cross post. Here's how this terrible spot was fixed: 1. Some other people recommended something called scratch-x (maybe not the name) and I was given some from the store to try on it. It did help a pretty good deal, but not enough. I went to a place that does detailing and they fixed most of the rest of it with some really nice wax and a buffing machine. It looks like new, except for a little area where it etched the paint, which is not fixable at reasonable cost to my understanding.

Total cost: $20 + lots of worry