Deff's 3d Work in progress

[deffenbaugh03]

Here are two cars i've been working on recently. Yes I know they aren't 100% realistic, they're missing things like panel gaps and other such things. They aren't 100% complete either. But the main reason for posting this is I would like to know if anyone who uses 3ds max could help me out. Right now i'm working on getting a good realistic looking paint job. I searched on the internet and found a tutorial but it turned out badly. I'm sure i did something wrong. So if any of you know of some good sites and online tutorials that could help that would be greatly appreciated.

First picture is after doing the tutorial. It looks great in some spots but its overall too bright. I'm using a skylight as my lighting and a phong material for the car paint. The tutorial said to use a high specular level in the 500's and a gloss of 115. I've tried lowering the skylight multiplier and the specular level but neither seemed to help.

Last three pictures are of my Formula One-ish car.

[Suka]

I think if the red car had more definate edges it would look so much better? Can you do that? Like the scoop and along the side panel, if the edges were sharper rather than so smoothed out that would look much better.