mhmayhem88

I'm looking to buy a C6. Victory Red in particular. That's what I owned previously. I went to a dealership yesterday that had two of them. A 2006 and a 2007. I looked at the 2007 first. It has about 50k miles. The interior was immaculate. The exterior needs a little love. A couple of scratches but nothing that wouldn't be easily fixed with a little touch-up paint. However...I noticed right behind the fuel door was a spot that was all faded. You could see and feel the difference in the paint. It was pretty bad and it was quite a large spot. I would say at least 8 inches in diameter.

It's almost as if the previous owner tried to fix up the paint themselves and did a pretty bad job. That being the case, I asked about the 2006 that they had. I went to go look at the 06 and, oddly enough, it had the same type of spot (this one was a bit smaller) in the same exact place! What are the chances of that? Was there some sort of defect in the paint? Is/was this common? Does it have something to do with it being right in the area of the fuel door? I just thought it was strange that two VR C6's had almost the same exact exterior paint issue in the same exact spot. I wish I had taken a picture (hindsight).

HBsurfer

I have not seen or heard of this before.

cmonkey713

The C-6 base coat/clear coat paint. The color is buried under the clear coat unlike older cars where the color is the top coat. It seems like I remember this issue has been discussed here in the past pertaining to hoods. You might try a search and see if you can find the thread where this was discussed. I would consider taking the car to a high end professional detailer for an opinion on what is going on. You could always have the affected panel repainted but the repair should be adjusted in the purchase price. Another option would be to keep looking for a car which the paint meets your expectations.

FAUEE

Gas eats paint. That'd probably where the fling from removing the gas filler went, and the owners did not keep wax on the cars regularly, or did the drive thru washes and wax. Probably pretty common on the older cars.

Without seeing it, there's no way to say if it's fiaxable. It'd be hard to believe the entire clear coat was gone, so a good polish may fix it up.

The other option is the dealership detailer did it. They may have a rotary polisher and used that as a stop or end point and caused some burn there.

buckmeister2

Too little wax maintained, and too much vigorous cleaning in the gas-fill area would be my guess. Yes, on both cars is possible. Possibly both cars had fuel stains, or similar scratches.

No, it is not common to C6, or that color. If you could feel a difference, that sounds to me like someone went for the rubbing compound to remove something. When you can actually feel a difference, and there is no gloss, there is a good chance the clear coat has been abraded. It might be fixable, or it might not.

ForceFedC4

The trucks at my job get fuel spilled on them regularly by careless employees. It does nothing at all to the clear coat on them and they are ford rangers. It sits on the clear and they only get washed once every couple months. I would imagine the paint on a Corvette is certainly of equal, or better quality than that of a ford Ranger.

If you have ever spilled gas on clear you'll notice it acts like a solvent and removes all wax and dirt. Perhaps both of the cars you looked at, had a lot of wax on them but somebody recently spilled fuel on them and used a rag to wipe it off at the dealership causing it to appear dull as compared to the surrounding paint which has a protectant on it.

mhmayhem88

Thank you for the input guys! It's always appreciated. I'm going to take a second look at the 2006. As was mentioned, the spot on that one was much smaller but I need to take another look. I also didn't get to test drive it last time because they were replacing the windshield.

It has about 90k miles but it only had one previous owner and the Carfax looks great. I can tell whoever owned it previously was meticulous with maintenance. If I don't love it then I have no problem walking.

CadVette

Sounds like they had the same person work on both cars. Hard to say if it can be buffed and polished out without seeing it in person.

jrose7004

Probably previous owners that were careless when filling up. No paint defect that I'm aware of.