Painting the cladding is unforgivable IMHO. It removes so much of the VX's character.

Line-X the cladding and you actually enhance the color and textural contrasts. Hopefully we can use less drastic measures to keep our claddings in top-notch shape, closer to stock condition. But to me Line-X seems perfectly acceptable. I'll probably end up doing mine eventually. Looks great, not perfect, but great.