I assume you looked at all the BMWs on the showroom floor before ordering and didn't notice the bad orange peel in their paint? Virtually all BMWs have bad orange peel, so you must have looked at it, but not seen it.

Pretend you never came to this board, never heard of orange peel, and you'll be happy. Most people do not notice orange peel in the paint.

See now this is really sage advice. Besides you're going to have a hard time seeing the orange peel through all the swirl marks the car wash kid in the back of the dealer is going to put in "shining" it up for you. :p:

Seriously, orange peel is one of those things you'd probably never notice unless someone pointed it out to you. Its like the screen door effect (SDE) in your plasma TV. Most people never even know its there.

Yes, true...which is why BMW does it.

And I am pretty sure $1000 for a 'paint correction' will not remove orange peel.

In case of orange peel, with whom do I waste my time squeaking - the dealer or BMW NA?

Seriously...do not even bother wasting your time. BMWNA and/or your dealer are NOT going to do one thing for YOU, considering there are millions and millions of BMWS on the road today, with the same quality of paint as your ONE car.

Dude..time to just give it up!!! :stickpoke

It doesn't really bother me honestly. What bothers me more is if a paint shop repaints your car after an accident without orange peel. It's what makes a BMW a BMW!

I get the point.

Yeah, when I had some work done on the Z4, the paint guy said the trick was not to provide a smooth paint job, as that was easy for him. The trick was to get the same amount of orange peel in the paint, so that the newly-painted areas did not look different.

I wonder if the paint jobs have gotten 'worse'/less good than they were on the older E53s? My '01 does not have any orange peel anywhere on the body panels...maybe it's all worn smooth from 9 1/2 years of rubbing Zaino on & off it. :dunno:

Maybe the newer paint(s) and process(es) are more prone. No biggie, jes'wondering.
GL, mD

This orange peel is one of the reasons that I had Phil's DetailersDomain team give my brand new X5 the "clay and wax" treatment when I received it. Now I'm not bothered by the orange peel at all -- not saying it's gone but I don't even notice it...