This is scary to me.. I had no idea this could happen. and I always close my rear hatch with the beauty bar. MMM I must of been lucky I guess I will stop doing that now. Lic Plate only from now on.

 

man, I love my ride, but damned if I'm not dissapointed in the qualty of body work. The paint has to be some of the worst I have experianced. Chips real easy, rust issues on the doors in under a year of ownership, dents from not properly shutting the hatch....

 

I'm going to chime in for my 2nd post. I have noticed that if you open any one of the 4 doors just a little b/4 trying to close the hatch there is no air pressure built up inside and it will close easily without slamming or pushing hard on it. I have been using the Chevy emblem to push on since day one using this method and it works fine, at least for me. Guess I am living dangerously...... O.C. HHR

 

In this day and age of EPA regs it is only going to get worse. The issues youy see with the HHR are common on most new cars today, Thin metal to get the requied MPG is only going to get worse and most cars today use a water based paint that is very hard and chips easy.

As for rust issues just look at the bottom of the hatches of any Dodge, Ford, and Honda, Nissan abd Toyota and note the rust on the bottom of fairly new vehicles.

I saw a 2 year old Hyundai SUV that had rust running out or the rear wiper hole already.

But back in the 60's and 70's the paint was just as bad in many other ways and even the thicker metal rusted too.

 

My current problem with this issue is that when the body shop fixed it previously they used Bondo, now it's back with paint cracking and chipping because I did it one time without thinking. Grrr, I hate to go back and lose 3 days work (my car is my work vehicle) for shoddy workmanship.

 

any idea how much the PDR costs?