Picture for reference:


Bumper different color than hood


Trying to look for opinions here. Took the car in under insurance to have some repair work done at caliber collision (car hit a pothole, the shop was completely incompetent. Never again.) They ended up replacing the front bumper cover and lower spoiler & paint. The car is an 06 Galaxy Gray, to my knowledge, there weren't any other grey's on the market at that time in the US, as Titanium grey was phased out in favor of Galaxy Grey for the 2006MY.

The front bumper cover has what looks like gouges or scratches near the Mazda emblem, and scratches below the surface of the paint job (which is weird, because those were NOT there before and I was told I got a new bumper cover.) These things will catch a nail they are that deep. Normally I'd chalk it up to someone keying the car or something, but the gouges are below the paint they applied as well.

I noticed the front bumper and fenders do not match the rest of the car. The hood and sides are a lighter shade of grey. They tried saying the car has been repainted a different color (it hasn't, there's no indication anywhere on the car its been repainted, and if it has, why would it be painted a lighter color of grey? Aside from clearcoat damage from the sun on the roof and trunk, the color is uniform, except where the shop worked on it.

Even the parts that are showing longterm sun damage to the clearcoat are the same color as every other area of the car, minus the clearcoat fading of course. I'd think if the car was repainted, it wouldn't be showing damage from the sun this rapidly. But I'm just speculating.

My chief complaint that I'm looking for opinions here is do you think they just painted it the wrong color? Because the areas they touched are distinctively not the right color, and I doubt even age would cause it to be this much of a differing color. The car is much lighter than the areas they repaired. Trying to determine what my options for recourse are.

 

That can happen - You should - prior to accepting the car and signing off - have it repainted or replaced (unless the agreement had language that color matching wasn't a guarantee). I'm surprised that it is that noticable but the "shop" could have used a color chip and mixed the prep by hand instead of going to a car paint specialist for the exact components to match and mix.

 

It's a lifetime warranty, so I'm hoping they honor it. The paint job was absolutely horrible, its already flaking in one area and peeling off. Does anyone happen to know what the bare, unpainted color of our bumper covers are? I was under the impression they were white. The reason I mention this is the area with the chip has that green color they use to mark damage with with those markers. So unless the color of the cover is naturally that green ish color, or they really didn't put any effort into it and just painted over their damage markers.

The district manager for the area is supposed to call me today and talk to me about it. I'm still betting they are going to tell me to kick rocks, given the time its been and the paint has been damaged due to the poor application....however, if they had performed the job properly, it wouldnt have been an issue to begin with.

The painted areas look darker, while the hood is a lighter grey. Being the car is a late model year 06 (I believe manufacture date was 04/06, so I'm surprised it isn't an 07 tbh) I think the only grey available was Galaxy Grey if memory serves. So I don't know how they would have messed up the color matching regardless.

Lets say the car was repainted (which I highly, highly doubt) they should have color matched it anyway, correct?