If you're talking about a Nascar recreation, keep in mind the paint job wasn't show quality.

Those cars didn't have no polished gloss finish!

In fact, back in the day, most were quite quickly painted and then covered in decals.

If its a street car, factory finish, the finish would still not be "show" winning.

Even though factory paint jobs can be nice, you still need to "cut and polish" to improve the look.

Cut and polish means to sand (usually wet sand) and then polish with various grades of compounds to create a smoother finish.

The smoother, the glossier.

But its all about depth.

If you want to create that kind of show car finish, multiple layers of clear coat is the thing.

And each layer is wet sanded in between applications, with the final layer being properly cut and polished.

(I knew a guy who's custom van was clearcoated more than 30 times to achieve unbelievable depth over some candy apple red!

It looked wet, like you could sink your finger into it. The polishing took weeks.)

Whatever your clearcoat is going over, gloss or dull doesn't matter, the underlying surface MUST be sanded (wet or dry) first to smooth it as much possible

and to create that 'tooth' for the next layer to adhere properly. Sand until all gloss is gone.

I prefer 800grit no-fil adalox premium coated paper, a nice dry sand paper.

[sorry about that...Dave's endless verbage is over...go about your business]