rick,

that purple power stuff works great, we actually use it in my shop to strip the floors too (when you buy it, its super concentrated, youre supposed to dilute it, but if you dont it works as a super degreaser, and did take the paint off my gas cap door. it did not harm the cladding itself though, it couldnt hurt. without seeing it its hard to say what would help, if its coming off under your friends finger, id say you could probably take a paint buffing wheel or ball and clean it up pretty well. depending what look you are going for, a few people have done a bedliner on their cladding, this sounds like it would be a prime candidate for that. you can get a high quality bed liner that is a very fine grain so its not so rough looking. if you didnt mind going that route, i would say go for it if the rest of the vx is in good shape, then you can try what you like on the cladding to remove that crappy paint, and worse case scenario, you mess up and bed line the cladding.

as for the wheels... well over half the VX owners ive ever met have had aftermarket wheels on their vx.. factory wheels just kinda suck. some have painted them with success though so if you like the black look contact them (socal VX and jdm monkey both come to mind) and see how they did it and what was used, a wire wheel will take the old paint and peeling chrome off

i would probably be asking myself how much could this VX really have been loved if the owner did such poorly thought out mods or dropped it at a dealer that would do it