Black paint eroding on 2004 Mitsubishi Galant.A professional analized paint-poor application by manufacture.Best approach to present manufacture to pay for repaint.
I very much doubt that any car manufacturer is going to pay for repainting a 5 year old car. Yes, there could be an exception if there is a class-action suit from a group of Mitsubishi owners who allege the same thing. However, by the time that something like this wends its way through the courts, you may not even own the car anymore.
Just as you had a “professional” come to the conclusion that this problem is the result of poor paint application at the factory, Mitsu will likely have their own experts give an opinion that the problem is the result of environmental factors, i.e.–air pollution, failure to wash, failure to wax, vandalism, etc.
Just to give you some perspective on the “expert” factor, last month someone came to this forum to fulminate against Toyota for allegedly selling him a car many years ago that had sustained body damage and had been poorly repaired prior to delivery. The “bad paint” did not reveal itself until something like 6 years after the car had been delivered.
How did he “know” that the car had sustained body damage and had been poorly repaired years before?
An “expert” told him!
Many of us took issue with his positions on the situation, and he wound up calling many of us some very bad names. Well, guess what? A couple of weeks later, he wound up eating his words and he did apologize to some of us for his insults. My point (and I do have one!) is that even so-called experts can be wrong.
I would suggest that you do a lot of “Googling” to try to determine if there is a class-action suit for the same problem. If you do not find one, then it is likely your only solution is to pay for that expensive repaint yourself.
You would need to be a whole lot more specific than just “poor paint application”. What does that mean? The cars are all painted by robots and the paint film is measured for proper thickness, inspected and so on. Plus, what does eroding paint mean? Peeling paint is another matter since that is well documented as a primer problem on certain models.
On a five year old car, with an unknown history of the care of the paint, I just don’t think this is worthwhile at all except to show it to the dealer and see what they say. That is of course if you have been getting all of your maintenance work done at the dealer. Otherwise you’ll be introducing yourself first, and then asking then to support you for a repair likely to be 25-50% of the value of the car. Not likely.