Patches on rear wheel arches?
 

I'm hoping to buy my first 8 soon and I spotted that a nearby garage had one on sale so I thought I'd go by for a quick look on my way home from work. They had it parked out front, right where it should be, and since it was my first time being up close to one I decided to give it a good look over. It was looking to be in pretty good condition until I was looking at the rear wheels and noticed that on the front of the rear wheel arch on the drivers side (right-hand side here in Ireland), was a patch. It was body coloured, roughly rectangular, and it looked stuck on over the body work as opposed to part of it, just around the edges there was a tiny bit of white on the patch itself and a very tiny gap. I had a look at the passengers side and the same thing was there, except it looked more integrated into the body and the paint ran seamlessly to the rest of the body.

Am I right in thinking this isn't a standard piece of the body work, and if not what might it be? The most obvious thing I can think of is that a past owner had a body kit of some kind, then removed it and the patches are in place to cover up holes where it was mounted. But from looking at pics of kits with side skirts here none of them seem like they'd be mounted that high up? The other thing obviously is that one side was hit and repaired and the other patch added to make it look more natural.

I've attached a pic to try and indicate roughly the size and location of the patches

Thanks,
Steve

I'm guessing that you're just seeing the clear bra that is there to protect the rear fenders from rock chips. I have the exact same thing on my brand new RX-8.

if there is a white line around its due to the guy waxing the car. the wax gets stuck in the crease. it cleans up, as you can see by the other side.

99% of the time its not visible. it does protect from rock chips though.

bmw z3 m has them too. a lot of higher end cars do.

search lol but yeah its clearbra and probably wax around it ... at least you know the guy waxed the car :)

Ah :sweatdrop

Thanks for the replies guys. It really looked like the patches themselves were body coloured and they seemed to be metallic, but I probably just didn't examine them closely enough. I'll see if I can get a test drive during the week and look at them closely again.

Thanks,
Steve

I have the body colored metallic patches on my '06 Ti Gray. They were there from the factory.

Take a Qtip and wet it and go around the edges with it. Theyre clear vinyl film