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You don't mention what scale you are working in, but I model in N-scale and I use pastels together with washes to do my weathering. I use "Nupastel" brand name and a fluffy bru***o apply the chalk dust, just slightly heavier than the end result will be. Then, I use a VERY thin wash of black acrylic paint to "set" it. The black adds shadow in the places where it settles, and the chalk stays where you've put it, for the most part. The trick is to get an entire side or area wet with the wash at one time, and for this reason it might be tricker to do in larger scales. Then again, if the car side is broken into natural divisions, you can work one "panel" at a time. I use a supple brush with strands long enough to match the height of my car, load it heavy with the wash, and then roll the wash onto the car side so that I have minimal brush strokes; the brush strokes can move the chalk around. Of course, after you've practiced this a bit, you'll learn that you can do neat tricks, too. One is to go very heavy with a rust-colored chalk and then apply the wash; the chalk will float on top of the wash in clumps, and then when it dries, they will settle down as random rust spots on the side. Another trick is to use a damp (not wet) brush, dipped directly into rust-colored chalks, to apply rust streaks as though it were paint. This actually can work really good with turpentine, too: you dip the brush in turpentine, then dry it out on a towel, so that it is almost but not quite dry. Then go into the chalks, and then blot this out a bit. Now, you can easily add rain streaks, or apply dry-brush highlights to details, etc. If your black wash is not quite as THIN as I say, and your chalks are applied really heavy, then you'll get them to mix and produce a range of greys, rather than the original chalk color. In my eye, the random greys look more realistic than "off-the-stick" pastel colors. The way the wash dries, too, it can produce some neat unintended effects; essentially, you're sticking dirt onto the side of the car in the same way that nature does, i.e. with moisture. I don't know if all of this works with brands other than Nupastel, but I suspect that it does; the wash doesn't really dissolve the chalk but rather it acts like a glue. Give it a try on one of your lesser models, and see if you can get it to work. It's rather easy, honestly.
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