any evo owners have white cars? EVOS ONLY PLEASE!!! and does yous rear bumper look discolored because of the stock exhaust? mine does. around the exhaust outlet, its turning yellow. like bad coffee **** yellow.... and i even bought the lancershop exhaust shield... will mitsubishi warenty this? please let me know. i dont want to drive my car around looking like the poor thing crapped its pants.

 

i still have a Mazda .... and that paint is crappy. I can say best paint is Honda. My cousin's 96 Integra's front end is great. sure it has chips after 200,000km, but they aren't deep.

 

bought my car in nov 04, and it's not even a daily driver but my hood looks like checker board. It seems every time i take it out theres another paint chip. WTF

 

Don't make your first post an assumption that so many people aren't taking care of their cars. This paint looked worse than my old Mazda 626 with 180,000+ miles within only about 6 months. And while I don't wax it as often as when it was new (too disappointing now to see all the chips), I always took good care to clean it then with high quality Meguire's products.

This is a problem that doesn't affect everyone. From the paint problem threads, there are far fewer people saying they have no problems than those that have problems. Given that those with no problems probably don't contribute to the thread, I can only estimate that it's about a 50/50 dispersion. And I imagine a lot of it has to do with the types of materials used to clean the snow off the roads. Mine certainly degrades faster during the winter with all the salt and dirt and sand.

Regardless, it's cheap paint - nothing to doubt about that. But it's not a matter of taking care of the paint. It's a matter of luck and environment more than anything I imagine.
-N

 

Cheep paint? I don't think so. Mitsu wanted $4 more per pint for the graphite gray over the mitsu sandstone grey (stock VR4 color) that I'm having my Stealth painted. I don't know of any daily driven car that doesn't get chips and scratches in it. Especially after 2 seasons of winter roads.

I'm not going to argue that mitsu didn't cut a corner some where though. I can't believe all the orange face in all of the finishes I've seen. Incredible how terrible of a prep job they did. The old saying goes, "It's hard to beat a factory paint job." Not any more, that is for sure.

Also, about my post. It was not my intent to be offensive. Please don't take it as such. You'll find me to question the majorities all the time. I'm definately not a bandwagon jumper. Just like to get all my facts straight, that's all.

 

Yeah that's right, after two seasons, not two weeks as was my case.

 

Cheap paint doesn't mean they don't charge a lot for it. Mitsu's products, especially accessories and parts, are very overpriced. I know for a fact that they cut corners all over the place in painting the cars too because more than a few panels on my car were without clearcoat. And further, there are very few coats of actual paint on there - I have a good view. By cheap paint, I did mean the whole paint job is badly done, not that the paint itself is low-cost.

And while I'm happy that your car took 2 seasons to start looking chipped, I've had my car just over 2 seasons now. It was disappointing after the first half a season and now it is downright disturbing. To those who have paint problems, it's not regular wear and tear, but it's statements like that that make you come off as assuming the other posters are wrong.

I was clear in my post that I recognize that not everyone has problems and that the ratio of thosee that do versus those that don't is not well represented in the paint problem threads. If you're unsure though if there's actually a problem, try searching around in your fact-searching. There's plenty of information here to dispell any thoughts you have that this problem is up for interpretation. As I said before, it's luck and probably some environment. But for all that it may be in environment, Mitsu did a crappy job preparing our cars for those environments.
-N

 

I've done some research into this (cuz I'm looing at buying one of these cars). No one lists their environment or car care habits. Hence my question. Just a bunch of guys saying they have problems. No, I'm not going to assume people religiously take care of their cars. See where I'm comming from?


Definately no argument there.

Something else to point out, look at the locations of the guys who say they don't have problems -vs- those that do.

 

i live in indy and have minor probs,just some slight fading, gone through two seasons with it. I'm still satisfied about my paint. To me it seems there are more yellow paint probs than any other color.

 

Well folks, I have some excellent news, Mitsu regional decided that a new paint job was in order! This was after the jacka** service manager at Rick Case Mitsu decided it wasn't their fault and we called regional back. They said take it to Spitzer Mitsu for a second opinion and the manager said faulty paint. I drop the car off this coming Monday after work, they provide a loaner car and I get mine back freshly painted on Thursday!

 

i bought my lancer in the spring of 2003...paint is terrible but that's b/c i do a lotta highway driving...those huge trucks really put damage on your front end...it really sux. do you guys do a lotta highway driving?

 

damn...that's great news man...about time made some right choices!

 

Yeah, the manager told me they can't afford to lose business, so they are repainting. I would imagine that since it will be painted here instead of Japan that it (finished product) ought to be better than factory in Japan.

 

No, I don't - We have had ours less than a year and 6k miles. It is driven by my wife to and from work every day on a lightly travelled paved road. Garaged at home, and through most of the winter. I take car of my cars. My 2003 Focus SVT daily driver with 81k miles on it has 4 or 5 chips on it, and it sits outside at home. My $35k Red Evo 2006 Evo has probably 50 chips on the hood in 6k miles.

Try again.

 

Curious, has anybody had the paint protection put on at the dealership when they've purchased the vehicle?