Hi All,

My '14 350 F-Sport spent nearly three weeks at the dealership as a result of a timing chain issue and a backordered O2 sensor. I picked it up last week and found that the front fascia had been scuffed up, on the passenger side front corner, as if someone cut a parking spot too tight and lightly touched another car.

There's no dispute - at least thus far - that the damage happened while at the dealership. They buffed out the scuff marks and at the time, things looked OK. The weather though has been miserable here and the car was filthy (their car wash was frozen) so I probably didn't give it as thorough of a look as I should have.

In any event, I had the car detailed today and the scuff marks are back. They're subtle, and must be pretty deep scratches in the clear-coat to still be there after being buffed out and now detailed a second time. You would have to be looking for them, but they are clearly visible if you are.

Bottom line is they're bothering me, mostly because I didn't put them there.

The question then is how do I approach this? I believe the only proper fix is to repaint the fascia, but that opens up the risk of the paint not being 100% matched with the rest of the car, plus all the other crap that can go wrong when you paint part of a car.

I should be speaking to the service manager tomorrow and just want some opinions as to what you'd do in my situation. For what it's worth, while my sales experience was horrible, service has been pretty good so far, scuff marks aside; I had ordered window tint while the car was in the shop and they comp'd it without my even asking because of how long they had the car.

Thanks,
Endaar

 

You really shoudn't have let them do what they did to begin with. I would have been demanding a full respray at that point.

As for spraying it, a well rated place would be able to blend it properly. However, they will need to respray the entire front clip, and that could be $1000 with labor.

 

You should have never let them buff out the damage in the first place! Anything with deep scratches needs to be sanded down and repainted and unfortunately, at this point, thats your only option.

 

Thanks for the feedback. I'm surprised you both think I should have immediately insisted on paint; my experience has always been the opposite, that if you can avoid paint, you're better off because it's anyone's guess what happens once you start. I spent a lot of years in the car business and saw more bad paintwork than good.

In any event, just to follow-up and close the thread, I had a couple friends who are all "car guys" look at the damaged area (i.e. I told them where to look) and none could even find the marks. So I'll chalk this up to a bad experience and me being a little obsessive and call it a day.

 

No, the rule of thumb is, if you can avoid paint, that's great. But if the damage can't be fixed, it should be repainted by a high quality paint shop of your choice. The dealership had no position to argue that point. It was done on their property, otherwise they could have a law suit on their hands. (i would have started with a call to Lexus corporate, but the potential to escalate is there...)

If you have seen more bad paint work an good paint work, it makes you're hanging around poor shops. Time to find a better shop.

And not to call out your friends, but if these are "car guys", they would be able to find exactly the issue you were talking about. I can usually find spots no one can find, and until they are fixed, they drive me nuts.

If you're ok with it, alright, but I think you are cutting yourself short by closing this issue. The dealership just got away with damaging your car and getting no repercussions.

 

just from experience ,i had my 2012 is front bumper repainted by dealer ,the paint was flaking off, they tried 4 times ,and it got worst every time ,runs ,missed spots , dirt and or specs in paint ,terrible color match. long story short i ended up with a new front cover painted by an outside shop ,done once done right

 

I have no love lost for this dealership but in this case they handled the situation about as well as possible. They agreed to paint the fascia if I wanted, so there was no need to escalate anything to corporate, etc.

The decision is do I live with a few marks that nobody other than myself - including people who are meticulous with their own cars - can even find, or do I have the fascia painted and run the risk of being less happy with the repaint than the marks?

I spent 15 years in the retail auto industry and saw literally thousands of body repairs, paint, etc. Obviously there are a lot of crappy body shops out there, and some very good ones, but even the good ones occasionally perform work that is within acceptable industry standards but not necessarily something those of us posting here would be OK with. Some colors are also tougher to match, which was part of the point of my original post. So there's a not insignificant risk the cure in this case would be worse than the disease.

Bottom line is while the situation is frustrating, I can't justify painting the fascia with all that entails to correct a couple of clear-coat scratches that are only visible from a couple inches away, in the right light, and if you know where to look.

Anyway, it's been an interesting thread and again, thanks for your feedback.

 

Make sure whoever does the paint sprays with European paint. PPG will not match too well with the Lexus colors that use European paint from the factory. The two paints that come to mind that most would carry here are Glasurit and Sikkens. I dealt with a dealership that only used PPG...they couldn't match the color properly so they ended up painting the whole car. Way more issues than it is worth.

 

I would insist that the entire front clip be repainted by a body shop of my choice (NOT the dealership's body shop). A professional will be able to match your color.

 

That would be my option