For all you OC detail people out there, and you know who you are, the days of claying are over,or they are for me. If you haven't heard of a "Nano Skin" pad you need to check them out. I do paint touch up for auto dealerships and in the course of four years with my current work van I have acquired quite a bit of over spray on it. I heard about these pads and thought I would give them a try, mind you they are a bit pricey but OMG. In four minutes I removed all the over spray on the rear quarter and glass of a Grand Caravan, in one half hour I could have done the entire van. Totally unbelievable,just a little quick detail spray for lube and a random orbit polisher and paint over spray, rail dust and your general road grime disappears with ease. I am not a vendor of these, you can get them at several detail supply houses, but I am a little OC myself when it comes to my vehicles and I feel like I have just found the "pot o gold" at the end of the rainbow. One pad is $55-65 and will do 50 cars.
I am sure Richard will chime in sometime, welcome his input as well. I have only used on light colors so far but I would imagine on black and darker colors you would need to lightly polish but white worked well, no visible swirls.
I used nano skin last year to detail my MINI. I had the 3 inch kit and not the 6 inch orbital buffer kit. The pad fell apart on me after a bit of scrubbing. Contacted the company and they sent our a replacement fairly easily. Requires a lot of lubricant since the pad is very sticky. I'm not sure if I'd replace clay with this stuff yet...