I now understand....

As an input to this discussion. I owned a couple of Peugeot 405 Mi16's back in the late 90's. Peugeot had left the US and the cars remaining here were quite cheap. There was a lively group of Peugeot owners sharing info on-line like we do.

Anyway, the 405 was plagued with headlights whose US-spec plastic lenses oxidized and clouded up badly - often worse than what you see on 15-20 year old BMWs.

Somehow, the US Dept of Transportation caught wind of the issue and made Peugeot issue a recall on the lenses years after they left the market. We all got new lenses from former Peugeot dealers -some of whom were still servicing cars.

I don't know why something similar wouldn't work for this issue, or even the broken adjuster issue that plagues the E39s.