Especially with red cars
Older cars sometimes suffer from peeling paint. An AutoWeek reader experiences it with a 2008 Citroën C4. What can you do about it?
Noa Schoonebeek from Hengelo, Overijssel: “The (clear) coat on the roof and side mirrors of our Citroën C4 (built in 2008) seems to be peeling. The car sleeps outside and is on the sunny side for a large part of the day. But still, can we do something about it, because it doesn’t look very nice.”
Peeling paint occurs especially with red cars
We had this question answered by Eddy de Jong, a member of our panel of experts, who works at universal garage Carprof: “We regularly encounter this with our trade-in cars. Especially red ones, but green and yellow are also notorious. It always concerns the so-called base coat with a layer of high-gloss clear coat on top that, over time, detaches from the base coat, resulting in dull spots. So far, in such cases, we have always chosen to respray the affected parts. There is a suspicion that the base color chalks (becomes powdery) under the influence of UV, thereby breaking the adhesion with the clear coat. It’s a bit like what you see with solid colors – without clear coat – red and yellow: these also become dull with ‘less’ care. A simple solution to fix it does not exist, at least not if large areas of clear coat have already disappeared, as is the case with your car.