Attention satin steel owners! -front bumper paint not matching
 

Hope this is in the right section. Just wanted to give you guys a heads up that GM has agreed to cover the cost of my front bumper to be painted to match the rest of my car. As far as I know, this is a common issue so I hope this info helps anyone in the same situation.

… I just noticed the “issues/problems/warranty” section. Fail.

That's interesting, since I believe all of the front and rear fascias are painted separately from the rest of the car and won't necessarily match up, particularly in the eye of a detail-oriented paint and body man. (The shop I am working with thought both my 2016 and 2021 had repainted front bumpers, due to the non-matching metallic paints, until I read here on the forums that the bumper fascias come to the assembly line pre-painted.)

Other than the lack of a match for the metallic paint, was there some other problem with the paint on the front fascia? What portions of the car will they be painting and/or blending?

While I would like to have front and rear fascias that match up better with the rest of the car, I would also be concerned about potentially ending up with something worse than I started with...

All of the plastic pieces (bumper covers, rockers, mirrors, spoilers, etc.) are not painted at the assembly plant like the car body is.

Batch to batch variation on metallic paint is common. Also, differences in "flop" of the fleck in metallic paints are common even when painted in the same booth by the same person with the same batch of paint. So even when the color matches, you can get visible differences in shade (and/or color with tinted fleck) depending on ambient light and viewing angle. But this is typically only a concern on high-end custom paint jobs, not something we would normally care about from the factory.

6th gen ZL1 wheels are notorious for huge variations in color due to the nature of the 3 layer paint. For some, G7Q Nightfall Grey Metallic is a perfect touchup match. For others it's nowhere close.

As stated by Vchula, because the plastic bits are not painted on the assembly line with the bodies with the same robots and same batch of paint, you will always see some kind of variation. Normally it's not too bad. But when it is, you get what you see in the OPs picture.

Indeed there will always be a small difference, plastic body parts on my car aren't painted the exact same hue as metal body panels either, but OP's car is in a whole another league, I'm glad GM agreed to repaint the front.

(Interestingly, I have a new front fascia and the doors blended due to a, khm, mishap, but the color match is absolutely perfect with the rest of plastic/metal, respectively, even though the body shop obviously used a different batch of paint, from >12 months later than when the car was built. The color difference on OP's car is way worse than anything I've seen.)

I wonder if there is any effort made on the assembly line to match up a fascia that is relatively close, and this is a "Friday car" situation for the OP, or if it is just luck of the draw on getting a fascia that blends better with the paint on the rest of the body? Perhaps something in the QC stage where they would swap in a replacement for something that appears to be this far off?

I would have to say no as I believe that the sub-contracted painted pieces usually arrive at the GM assembly plants within a day or two of the initial body welding (I think).

GM uses "Just in Time" delivery and it would be too costly to have piles of parts just lying in a room somewhere just so they can be color-matched to a particular body.

There were no other defects other than the difference you can see. I’m a little hesitant because I know it could end up worse than what I have now but i see it as- I spent some decent coin on a nice new car, it should be all one color. If they mess it up trying to fix it, I’ll push to have them repaint the whole car to make it right. Might be a long shot but I believe in getting what you pay for

mine match very well together.

Also painting plastic and metal can result in color variation between the two, especially in direct sunlight. I believe it has something to do with the metal parts getting ELPO dipped for corrosion protection and the plastics parts not going through that prior to painting. Much more noticeable on the lighter colors (even white).

My Arctic Blue car has the same problem, only it’s the rear bumper. It’s super noticeable where it meets the rear quarter panel.

I just found this thread. Mine is satin steel. It was built mid-late 2020. I bought it new 1-2-21.I didn't notice the front bumper being diff than rest of car a for few days. Now I don't notice.I have been hand washing it almost weekly and use turtle wax spray every 2-3 months. It seems to have blended.About the 3rd week I had it somebody at work asked me if I had wrecked it.I think op car looks great even with miss match.

My '22 Wild Cherry has the mismatch also. I see this all the time on many vehicles.