Protecting exterior black plastic and sun exposed rubber

These days our 2007 is living in the driveway and taking a beating from the SoCal sun (with the windows down an inch and windshield sun screen up, to keep it reasonably cool). The rubber gaskets around the side windows were turning white and chalky. This is the rubber that touches the inside of the glass, for instance, at the top of the door windows. That white material came off by rubbing with a damp cloth, along with some black stuff which is either oily dirt or breaking down rubber. It is probably plasticizer, or something similar, working its way up to the surface. The black plastic on the outside is looking a little dingy too. There are all sorts of products which claim to be great for rubber and black plastic, but I always worry that they will make it look good for a few years and then cause it to dry out or crack after that.

So, what do you folks use on these areas?

The inside plastic, like on the dash, center console, or arm rests on the doors, is not having issues. The grey paint on the door handles is coming off though. It started as cracks on the little plastic tab posterior to the handles, and then the paint flaked up and off, and now there are some cracks in the paint on some of the handles too. Body paint looks fine.

 

Turns out that there are also "covers" for the black plastic trim on the door pillars.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/223919185255

I may try some plastic polish first, probably PlastX. Maybe the haze will come off with just that. Consumer Reports looked at these products back in 2014 and they liked "Wipe New" (the trim restore product, there are several other products under that name) and "Renu Finish", with the former being less fussy to apply. A couple of more recent videos on youtube liked Cerakote Ceramic Trim Coat kit, especially in terms of how long it lasts. I'm a little afraid of that stuff though, if it goes wrong it will be a pain to fix. That's probably true for "Wipe New" too, as it sounds like a very similar product. Products like "Back to Black" are said to wear off quickly.

(Warning about PlastX. Once upon a time I would apply this to our cars' headlights, but found out the hard way that when a bottle gets old, that is, after years in a hot garage, shaking may no longer let it fully remix. It sounds like it is mixing, but most of the polish has caked onto the walls and does not mix. So when a dab was put on an applicator and rubbed over a headlight it ate the clear coat off instantly, as what came out of the bottle was almost all solvent.)

 

Was the 2nd gen Prius black door trim originally glossy or matte?

On my walk this morning I noticed that all the older Toyotas (including a gen 4 Prius at least 3 years old) had dusty gray/black door trim, with not a hint of shine, but the two newest Toyotas on the block had glossy trim. One of these was a Mirai, which is sort of a cousin of the 4th gen Prius.

From my observations I can draw almost no conclusions. Just that if the trim was originally glossy, it sure didn't retain that finish well with age. Also that the door trim on old Toyotas pretty universally looks like crap. That's probably true for all the other brands too though.