[Asif 6959]

No 2 doctors will prescribe you the same medicine.
Similarly no 2 painters would give you the same repair method left alone cost. Had recently experienced this when wanted to repair a rust on my Hyundai Creta.

Tata Motors are notorious for their QC, rust on old Indigos, Safari and Sumo was synonymous. I have seen export Xenon's being re-painted at the port before being loaded on to containers.

Many times is does happen that a car gets a touch-up outside the production line and its no big thing for any manufacturer. This obviously is for minor defects. By the looks of it the car has been repainted at the dealership and there is no way the car would leave in such a condition from the factory.

If the owner of this particular Safari was shown the defects they should have taken it up with the dealership and Tata Motors directly rather than getting it repainted outside.

[aneesh2M]

Hi,

As many said here, this does not look like a factory paint job. It must have been repainted for some reason (may be not informed to the customer before delivery). I have seen many TATA cars for years now and the paint quality of TATA is decent and not many defects are seen on them.

I was also a little surprised to see amount of sanding was done on the car, as already said the clear coat on the car was lower than required and then it was again sanded further down. IMO if this was really a paint defect from the factory, then the right thing to do was to report this to the dealership and get the same corrected under warranty.

[Cresterk]

Originally Posted by Black_Star

No way that Safari would pass the quality inspection, and paint quality is one of the first things they check. Heck even dealership have good paint booth to make sure the original paint quality and consistency is maintained. It looks more like someone had repainted the car in open air. If this was done by the manufacturer the owner can take Tata to consumer court for the botch-up work they did.

You would be surprised. A brand new Safari was allotted to me which came from the factory with the AC not working. And I am not nitpicking about the AC not being cool enough, the entire system wasn't even blowing any air at all! Even if they skipped testing completely, you would think someone down the line from the factory drivers, to the loader/unloader, to the dealership personnel would have noticed that the AC was non-functional in this hot weather but no, not a single person cared and they tried to pawn it off on me. Tata quality control is an absolute joke

[Black_Star]

Originally Posted by Cresterk

Tata quality control is an absolute joke

Well I had a Tata Indica, which I had to sell after 5 years so I understand your pain. TBH I thought Tata would have improved their quality for their Halo car but apparently not.

[MartinVirage]

For people who say Factory paint have immense quality control, I am sorry. Not just Tata any car for that matter has/may have problems in batches of paint.

Its a trick of the trade, by using a paint depth meter you can determine if the panel has been repainted. But, what if its dealership painted vehicle in which the entire panel has been replaced due to transport damage, and the rest of it is just overspray?

Orange-peel is something that I wont comment about. It is very technical - I mean his reasoning is not good enough. Orange peel can be due not just lesser clearcoat used, but also method (axis of automated paint gun, droplet size, etc.). Unlike a detailer, I don't think a manufacturer will carry out a high level paint detail on a new car.

Technically, it was very hard for me to digest the fact, that when you are looking a t a mirror finish detail you are actually removing the clearcoat of the vehicle.

Conclusion: Lets not blame TATA or any other manufacturer and be more aware while PDI-ing our cars.

[Aravind_M92]

These detailing shops do make us feel like we treat out cars very inferiorly! I would get the car repainted in case of a deep scratch which might cause rusting. Apart from that I avoid it. Keeping a car in top mechanical condition is my priority. I need my car safe to drive rather than have a custom paint job or getting a job done which might cause any structural troubles! I've seen many restoration videos where car is cut and welded over again and still they claim, the car does have the same structural integrity as from the factory! I've seen cars quite neglected over time still looking good after a quick wash. I don't see the point in ticking the guilt of driving a car with minor dings and scratches. It's a car and is driven on the road with lots of factors weighing in! During COVID all of us doctors and frontline workers were affected by Covid atleast once. Noone can escape that. Similarly for cars, on roads dings and scratches are inevitable. For me as long as my car is safe to drive ( no major structural damage) I would be happy to live them rather than pushing my guilt over it.

[Captain Slow]

Originally Posted by sagarpadaki

This had me in splits

Is the sai colorium still dishing out sub standard paint jobs? My bad experience with them was almost a decade ago. Thought things would have improved over the years

Lets just say that someone I know wasn't very happy with the outcome of the work done.

[Leoshashi]

Not only Tata, even some Japanese brands have deteriorated in that regard. Our Innova has some minor dust nibs on some panels. I initially thought the car was damaged and repainted at Dealer, but dad was present all along when the car was getting unloaded from truck and that same day delivery happened. DFT readings also confirmed paint was original, had a consistent reading of ~90 microns.

The major shock came to us when we discovered that our Crysta's engine bay had no proper paint coating inside, whereas other cars had. It had those paint markings on nuts and bolts too intact, thus it was a proper factory job. Dealer did give us option of filing VOC etc and escalating to Toyota, but since the car in general was fine, we didn't pursue it further. They would have offered painting the bay which means removing engine etc, so we refused.

Thinking our car as one of those lemons, we ignored it. In November, a family friend bought a Fortuner, and it had dust specs on almost every panel. Not as bad as the Safari featured in video, but it was there.

Even my XL6 had a few dust specs in paint despite having proper DFT readings all around. Thus it's safe to assume, the paint shop maintenance and QC has really gone down. Heck, my 22 year old M800 has thicker original paint than my XL6, if that's any indication of quality.

[AirbusCapt]

Too much emphasis being laid on a coat of paint in my opinion. Are we supposed to enjoy the vehicle or keep it packed in a layer of cling-wrap, under harsh lights and feel happy about the gloss?
I would rather have 5 years and 2 lakh kms of happy memories rather than 5 years and 20,000 kms of shiny, blingy beauty.

[kiredd1005]

My Toyota Innova too had a lot of paint defects. Luckily it didn't show up very easily. The person installing PPF and ceramic showed me the defects. He was able to remove most of the defects with sanding and polishing. It was little annoying to see the defects that too on a brand new car. Of course, I didn't bother to tell the dealer because I didn't want to ruin my peace of mind!

He also showed me another brand new Fortuner Legender having similar defects. I made peace with it and left!

[The Rationalist]

How many of us have perfect skins? While we all may wish to have skin without blemishes and acne scars, it's impossible. Why this much obsession with perfection? I have never worried about small scratches and dents. I do tend to feel upset seeing small scratches and all, but once inside and start driving, I'm not all bothered as I just love the way the car takes the corners and all. Looks like people are buying cars to keep it on display in their living rooms! With the kind of obsession shown, it's impossible to drive the car in India for sure!!!

[TheCarLover]

I think in general, all quality has come down across car brands, leave alone the paint job.

In the view of providing features, the car companies try to extract more out of us by degrading the quality in parts that does not directly fall into our views.

Going forward, be aware even if it is a midlife facelift, there could surely be some cost cutting measures that are not apparently visible.

Not sure if this is the right thread, but do let me know if you can guide me to a good paint service in Chennai. Also do let me know across India. Am planning to repaint my Exotica Red Fiat Punto

[poloman]

Originally Posted by AirbusCapt

Too much emphasis being laid on a coat of paint in my opinion. Are we supposed to enjoy the vehicle or keep it packed in a layer of cling-wrap, under harsh lights and feel happy about the gloss?
I would rather have 5 years and 2 lakh kms of happy memories rather than 5 years and 20,000 kms of shiny, blingy beauty.

I think this is one reason why people buy cars, to look at the gloss and feel happy about it. That is why we have a multi billion dollar detailing industry. This is a way of enjoying the car for many. Perfectionists and people with OCD will spent any amount of money to keep their cars shiny and glossy. I get the scratched panels dented and painted almost immediately.

[Mortis]

Paint quality is coming down across brands I feel. There was another thread/post where a BHOian got a Kia with partially painted inner door borders and on complaining was shown similar situation on other customers cars.
Heck the paint on our Dzire is so thin a big sneeze would strip it off. Had the bonnet repainted at the dealership after an accident under insurance and the paint went dull and milky in 6 months TWICE. Finally got it repainted from my independent painter and it's much better other than a minor difference in the metallic flakes

[panda1707]

I agree with what this guy has shown in the video.
I have a Harrier DE and I see such defects around the vehicle. I had to get the boot lid repainted at TMS.