fragile paint on the newer cars?

[Taka Mizutani]

German cars' formulation of water-based paints seems to be unusually soft.

It must really depend on the paint formulation, because the V70R does not
have this problem, and it's 4.5 yrs. old with 41k miles.

However, my Miata has developed quite a few chips in the 40k miles I've
driven it in the last two years.

My Subaru had a similar issue- stone chips pretty easily.

Taka


On Tue, Aug 26, 2008 at 11:35 AM, Brett Dikeman <brett at cloud9.net> wrote:

> What gives with the paint on the newer cars?  My folks' C6 A6, not very
> old (and not many miles), has the most impressive collection of paint
> chips and scrapes I've ever seen.  They're about half the size of an
> eraser head, on average.
>
> The color is metallic dark green, and from the paint chips- which reveal a
> green primer- you can clearly see that the color and clearcoat layers are
> almost microscopically thin.
>
> Contrast this to their now-12-year-old Volvo, which has (white) paint that
> must've been made out of diamonds; despite years and years of abuse with
> little waxing/polishing- a bit of cleanup, and it looks fantastic.  Even
> the leading edge of the hood is almost completely chip-free.
>
> I never had such durability issues with the paint on my 200, either...
>
> Brett
>
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