Here I was thinking mine was repainted for sure. I have the same thing going on in the hood and door jams of my X.

Same.

Edit: Not anywhere nearly as bad, but it's there in little specks on the hood jam.

Mine's black. Seen it on quite a few other black E53s.

Thanks for easing my worries I thought at first it was maybe wrecked but my mechanic and also body shop said my quarter panels were never taken off and my carfax was clean I checked before I bought it. I'm sorry about the pictures there is on bolt missing I should have just taken a wider angle shot so you could see better. Did anybody do a repaint on anytime like this? Does that take care of it?

This is a common problem for Estoril 4.6s. Every single one I have seen in person has varying degrees of the same thing. Mine is Imola and has no signs of this. Strange...

I saw an Estroil 4.6 the other day that had chunks of paint missing from the roof and hood, some others on the body too and around the edges. Too bad.. It's the best color.

At least it's minimal. Im sure a respray would take care of it. Paint has evolved a decade since then. My X5 is titanium and has held up well, but its ready to be painted.

Estoril Blue is a beautiful color. I've though about painting my 7 series that color one day. Its just so labor intensive to change colors.

My Estoril has the same issue. Also I was losing chunks of paint on the roof starting ai the top of the wind screen. I had it repainted. The had to strip back about half way down the roof before it was solid.

These all appear to be a classic example of color/clear coat not adhereing to the primer. Notice all the seperations are where the factory does not clear coat? >seams.

These issues were part of national campaign many years ago with the light blue matallic colors from Ford, GM and Chrysler. Everyone of those cars had the paint peel due to different manufactureres of paint were awarded the contract based on their low cost. The winning bidder removed the UV additive from the clear coat to meet their cost winning bid. The result was 90% failure of all light blue matallic painted cars to keep the paint on the hoods and horizonal survices. There was a limited campaign to repaint these cars by the factory IF the vehicle met a VERY narrow set of requirements. The results > less than some 10% were repainted by anyone. So the junk yards back in the 80's were full of rusted lite blue cars. A few owners drove on without a clue in their heads nor could they have cared less about paint as they NEVER washed their cars and were proud about that fact.

I worked for a dealer during this time line and saw it first hand. 1st rule at the dealer level: say these words "Your the first one I have seen " or "Your The Only One" or the more popular one: "They are all like that", i.e. ... "normal".

Now back to the present issue. It appears that the primer/color coat failure has to be a known condition across multiple owners/dealers/BMW HQ. the real challenge is to hammer BMW NA customer hotline for info on who has reported it to them. (One case is a exception. Multiple cases is a failure of quality control). The recomendation here is to dial up BMW NA HQ.
Customer Relations:
1-800-831-1117
[email protected]

once again

Phone:
800-831-1117

How to reach a live person:
Speak "customer relations" when recording begins and then select "1" for vehicle or "2" for motorcycle

Hours of Operation:
9am - 9pm EST

Address:
BMW of North America, LLC
300 Chestnut Ridge Road
Woodcliff Lake, NJ 07677-7731

I have discovered you can S L O W down the process by keeping the car washed WAXED and inside the garage. (ask me how). The problem will just move forward slower not stop.

As there are hundreds of these vehicles running around and not all have a problem I would guess the issues were factory related and can be traced to a paint room issue. Things like daily start up conditions, Metal work shop (Panel prep), assembly line process challenges, etc.

I would recommend everyone look at your production dates and LOCATION to see if there are any patterns. Like all are from SC during the early production days. In the industry it is called a marker (RED FLAG).

Good luck one and all
My darker color (Faster, better looking, and all around much more superior) X5 4.8is appears not to have the issue....yet
:nana2:

Thanks for the contact info, I'll cal them up and see what line they throw at me! :D I'm hoping to get my jams repainted and anything else that looks like it's starting to peel. thankfully my roof hasn't started but i'll be keeping a close eye on it...