I have neither and have been crying since day 3 of ownership. I thank the Lord that the winter wasn't a typical one or I wouldn't have any paint left down below. I have noticed more tiny chips on the front. It's like the paint is soft or something. I've never had a vehicle with paint like this.

 

I don't have boards or flaps and will be meeting with the area rep by the end of the month....paint is not the issue at hand...its plastic, soft I might add, that gets blasted. once I get GM to fix it I'll be getting boards and flaps.

 

Hmmmm, by your description it really sounds like a paint adhesion issue, I would take it to the dealer and have them look at it. If you don't have mud flaps and / or running boards you will have more rocker panel chipping etc. then others do with them. But there are several owners of HHR's without them and I've never heard of anyone else having paint problems to this extent. Also keep in mind that modern paint is very soft as compared to the enamels and laquers used several years ago. The EPA has seen to that because of pollution. Paints now day's are for the most part water based and just don't harden like paint used to.

Back in the mid / late 70's Chrysler products went through a heck of an ordeal due to paint peeling, especially on silver cars. They discovered it was caused by the primer they were using. Although I don't think this is the same kind of problem since you's seems to be isolated....Good luck brah

 

Since people are talking about mud flaps a question for those of you with them,
did any of you paint them to match your car or leave them black?
If you did paint them any problems with the paint on the flaps?

 

Mine are still black. I don't know if I would paint them because they are kind of rubbery and all of the crap they keep from chipping your car would just chip the paint off of them. If I do attempt any painting on them it will be color matching the HHR logo on the rear set and thats all. The black of the mud flap kind of goes with the rest of the black on the vehicle.

 

Why not just paint the back sides of all four? Then you'll not have to worry about the road debris chipping the paint.
That is unless you do a lot of driving in reverse.

 

I don't really want them color matched other than maybe the letters. I like them black.

 

Only responding to your "IF" scenario. Also, just to throw out ideas for ohters.

 

I haven't painted the ones on my HHR and won'r because my car is so low the rear mud flaps scrape coming intomy driveway and this would cause the paint to chip off.

With that said, we've painted mud flaps made like the HHR ones on several other cars without any problems. We've also painted several other body parts made out of the same material (ridged plastics) like body mouldings, door handles, etc. with great success. The key is the prep work, if done properly you shouldn't have any problems with them. After all, you only paint the back side of the flaps so they shouldn't get chipped since the road rebris is deflected off the the front of the flaps.

if you do paint them let us know how they turn out.

 

I have an Orange HHR and only chipping paint was little bit caused by road debris. Have since had running boards and no problems since.