satin paint job

i am turning a '90 reatta into my own concept car and wanted a paint job that turns heads. i once saw a satin-metallic, candy color blue 30's roadster and was amazed by the paint. the base coat had a satin finish, but the top coat was crystal clear. i was told that to get that effect from automotive paint, you have to sand the base coat before you spray the clear coat, and another person told me that the finish was achieved by painting the car with kind of an overspray only technique. does anybody know how to get a satin finish from automotive paint? if the answer is to sand the car, what grit of paper should i use? wet or dry? any advice in this area would be great, thanks. would a little bit of pearl in the paint show up either?

Well, I don't know if this helps, but I know that one time when someone was clear coating a carbon fiber hood but did not want to gloss a clear coat typically brings with it, a flattening agent was added to give the clear coat a flat satin finish versus a gloss, and that's exactly what it did and achived. I know there was some wet-sanding involved too, but I do not know if that was to flatten it or not, as you are supposed to wet-sand a carbon fiber hood like that anytime before you clearcaot it. If you have ever painted with a clearcoat/basecat paint, the basecoat is typically satin in finish and very flat. When the clear coat is added, the shine and the gloss (and if it's a 2-stage pearl, the pearl sparkle effect) comes and is achived. I have never added a flattening agent myself, but I know on the Carbon Fiber hood the flattening agent really helped flatten out the clear coat when it was sprayed and kept it from being glossy. I would imagine that if you added the flattening agent to the clearcoat like this when painting a basecoat, clearcoat paint, it would help flatten the finish out some also.