I would like to make a couple of comments to this. I spent about 7 years with the OEM's dealing with coatings application, my last two assignments were in Oshawa and LDT. I have worked for a powder manufacturer as a SME for GM on powder coating application, from there I went to work in QA andR&D for a coating company doing OEM validations. Over my years with the OEM's I had the opportunity to meet some very knowledgeable people in coatings and am pretty sure some of the stuff I did in those plants is still being used today.
Rock chips can be caused by several issues the following are some of the most common failure modes; excessive film thickness (thicker is not always better, including the clear coat, the thicker the coating is you get leverage allowing the coating to fracture and chip off easier), brittle coating, poor inter or intra coat adhesion (basically either a individual coating is poor or the system itself is poorly designed) A great way to prevent rock chips is to not tail gate and not drive on freshly salted roads.
As far as slacking on the coatings, it's been a few years but I am not aware of any water born clear coats being widely used by any of the OEM's, could be wrong I've been out of the game for a few years. The last I talked to anyone about water born clears they just did not have the durability there yet. The majority of OEM's are going to water borne base coats due to VOC requirements. I'm partial to powder and know that BMW is one of the leading users of powder clear coats over liquids (I know because I have worked with several of the clears they are using)
I would like to close by asking who has actually gone out and put a film gauge on the panels to see what the total film thickness is? I can but have not because I don't really care. They have some pretty good QA checks in Oshawa for coating inspection (I know because I spent about 3 years up there helping train them on their new paint shop, btw this was about 3 years before the first production camaro was built.
As far as the color match that I read about, I have the following to add...if you expect a plastic to exactly match a metal you are living a pipe dream. I can't remember the last time I saw a car roll off a factory line that I could not pick the coating apart on. You want to hear an interesting fight go to lunch with a plant guy, the fascia supplier and the coating supplier, been there and the plant guy is ALWAYS screaming at them both because the color NEVER matches on any of the plastic. The sad thing is they are looking at it on a level that few do.
bottom line they are nice cars, this coming from someone who swore they were not going to buy another GM car after the buy out. So that's my soap box, not really wanting to flame anyone just had to unload that at one time. Now go out there, get in your car and go turn some heads cuz to quote a supervisor I once knew "you'll never see that going 80 on the highway"
