I was shopping today with my wife for a used (previously owned, LOL) S type Jaguar at the Palm Beach Aston Martin, Jaguar, Lotus dealership. I was suprised to notice that the new Jaguars, particularly the clear coated metalic finished XKR's display the same orange peel finish as my 04 Titanium RX8. It's not terrible, but when I first noticed it on my 8 it was a suprise, remembering the mirror finished on Jags etc. But now I'm realizing it's pretty typical on most new cars except it seems for those with black finishes. I wonder if it's a side effect of new water based acrylic finish in general vs: older acrylic lacquer. BTW...the Aston Martin DB8 looked pretty terrific...for $129,000...it probably should....Let's see, that's about 5 RX8's! Also, I can't say that I was overly impressed with the XKR either...the RX8 is still amazingly underpriced.

 

Well supposedly orange peel is caused by the clear coat drying too fast. I'm not sure how you would prevent that. Humidifiers?

 

I don't know either...I used to own a prototype/model and special effects shop and we used to use Dupont lacquer back then. To slow the drying we'd need to add retarder to the mix. I was recently in a auto paint supply shop and the guys were lamenting about the new water based paints...Guess the EPA strikes again. Glad I'm out of the biz.

 

as far as I know, there is no way to stop orange peel, but after the paint is dried you can wet-sand,buff etc. to get rid of it. if you take enough time and use the right materials it will vanish, but it's a ton fo work

 

I think you are on the right track with the water based paints. BMW were one of the first to use these systems. I had a surprsiing amount of orange peel on my old E46 3 series.

On the other hand, maybe it's just a Ford thing!

 

Aside from the slight orange peel finish on the 8...I continue to be amazed at the overall value of the RX8. The dymanic stability control ( found also in the Jaguar at $45k) The fact the the 8 has a legitimate rear seat..the G35 rear is useless...and the 8's rear seat has even a bit more headoom than the S type Jaguar. And, the styling of the 8 turns heads. You'd almost need an Aston Martin Vanquish to match it in uniqueness. Got off the paint subject...sorry just always rant after looking at other new cars.

 

It's not just the RX-8, I've noticed orange peel on many other cars.

I was really admiring a yellow 350Z (yellow is a new color for the Z this year), but under the showroom lights the orange peel on the Z looked horrible. Just a few days ago I was following a new BMW M5, must have been a 2003 left over, and I noticed really bad orange peel on it too.

 

Something must have happened with the paint formulations in the late 90's... I had a '98 Explorer and a '96 Miata with flawless clearcoats, but my '02 Explorer and '04 RX8 have the orange peel.

 

http://www.epa.gov/oar/oaqps/peg_caa/pegcaa03.html

 

what does orange peel look like?

 

It's kinda hard to describe- it's easiest to notice by looking at the reflections of other things in the hood or doors... especially in daylight. The reflections aren't perfect mirrors, but are slightly warped or dimpled, like the surface of an orange peel. One quick way to see the difference is to look at the reflection of something in your front end, and see the difference between the plastic front bumper and the hood... like in your garage. While the plastic parts aren't perfect, they don't suffer from the orange peel effect that the metal parts do.