PAINT YOUR WAGON?

Announcer:	From our studios in New York, here again is Stone Phillips.

STONE PHILLIPS: It may be one of your most prized possessions. It's
certainly one of your biggest purchases. So you probably want to keep
your car looking as shiny as the day it came off the assembly line. But
suddenly you notice peeling paint here, another flake there, and pretty
soon your pride and joy is looking like it's spent too much time at the
beach. Well. now some angry owners who bought their vehicles, back in
the mid '80s and early '90s claim they got burned and not by the sun..
Here's Chris Hansen.

Mr. HARRY RILEY: I've done nothing different with this truck than I've
done with the previous truck or my other cars and none of them look like this.

CHRIS HANSEN reporting: (Voiceover) To understand what's getting under
Harry Riley's skin, you only have to scratch the surface, of his truck.
The paint on Riley's 1991 Ford F-250 is peeling so badly, there's
barely any paint left on the roof.

(Harry Riley washing car; truck roof; paint damaged roof)

HANSEN: So the only solution here is to strip all the paint off the
entire truck...

Mr. RILEY: And redo it.

HANSEN: ...and redo it.

Mr. RILEY: That's what I've been told.

HANSEN: (Voiceover) Riley said the problem began about a year and a half
after he bought the truck brand new. One day while washing it. lie says
he noticed a chip the size of a nickel up on top of the truck.

(Hansen and Riley looking at truck roof; truck roof)

Mr. RILEY: But at that time the spot was so small, the rest of the
truck looked very good, I just more or less disregarded it.

HANSEN: (Voiceover) Disregarded it, Riley says, because lie didn't
think the chip would get any worse. He was wrong. After a rainy night
almost two years later, Riley discovered what was once I chip was
starting to spread like a cancer.

(Riley washing track)

Mr. RILEY: Enough paint had come off of the roof, that it caught in the
windshield wipers.  I turned on the windshield wipers and they streaked
the window. So I actually had to get out and get the paint off.

HANSEN: Riley's truck isn't new, but at six years old it's not that old
either.  And we talked to 15 different people with expertise in
automotive paint from chemical engineers to automotive instructors who
all said the same thing. Paint shouldn't peel like this on any car or
truck less than 10 years old.

Mr. RILEY:  All I'm doing is just wiping my hand across it very lightly.

HANSEN:	(Voiceover) But Harry Rileys problem isn't as rare as you might
think. And it doesn't just affect Ford trucks.

(Car with peeling paint: person putting paint chips in plastic sack:
woman chipping paint with fingernail; hand wiping paint chips fromvehicle)

Unidentified Man #1: I'm not very proud to be driving it, but there's
not a whole lot I can do.

Unidentified Woman #1: It rained hard last night.

Unidentified Woman #2: Right. Mm-hmm. 

Woman #1:  So, there were chips of paint in our driveway this morning.

HANSEN:	(Voiceover) From Seattle to Detroit, to North Carolina to NewYork.

(Man showing  paint chips oil car; woman showing chips on back of
pickup; car with paint chips; two men lookng at paint chips on the roofof car 

Unidentified Woman #3:	Somebody should really accept
responsibility for this problem.

HANSEN:	(Voiceover) People are complaining about peeling paint on more
than three dozen different models of Ford. GM and Chrysler vehicles.

(Cars with paint problems)

Unidentified Woman #4: You just rub your hand across it and it-it just
flakes right off.

HANSEN:	(Voiceover)  Disgruntled owners aren't hard to find.

CROWD: (In unison) No excuses! Paint it!

Ms. JANET WHITTERS: (TV broadcast) We have been overwhelmed by telephone calls.

HANSEN: (Voiceover) In New Orleans a reporter from NBC affiliate WDSU
asked people with peeling paint to meet in a parking lot one day last
year. A hundred and fifty people showed up with all sorts of cars and trucks.

(Janet Whitters on TV broadcast; cars with paint problems)

Unidentified Woman #5: What have we got? 

Unidentified Woman #6: We've got a '91 Ford Taurus.

Unidentified Man #2: Plymouth Voyager. 

Unidentified Woman #7: Dodge Shadow.

Mr. CLARENCE DITLOW:	We just stopped counting in terms of
how many complaints we've had about peeling paint.

HANSEN: (Voiceover) Clarence Ditlow is the director of the Center for
Auto Safety. a consumer advocacy group. He says he's got well over
10,000 letters on file from angry Ford, GM and Chrysler owners who all
say they have badly peeling paint.

(Clarence Ditlow working in office)
Mr. DITLOW: We were just struck by how similar each complaint was.
That large chunks of paint were peeling off the hoods and roofs of cars.

HANSEN:	Some angry consumers say they've identified the specific reason
why their vehicles are peeling, and they're taking Ford, GM and
Chrysler to court. The law suits claim the big three automakers created
a peeling disaster by using a painting process on certain cars and
trucks manufactured between 1984 and 1993 that weakened the paint on
millions of vehicles.

(Voiceover) To understand the argument you need to know a little bit
about how cars and trucks get painted. The steps vary from model to
model and plant to plant. But basically a vehicle is first dipped in
something called "electracoat" to protect against corrosion.  Then
robotic arms apply spray primer, a middle layer that smoothes the rough
surface of the electracoat and helps the paint stick. Finally, there
are color and gloss coats on top.

In the mid to late 1980's the automakers and auto paint companies
developed a new kind of electracoat, more effective than the old one at
protecting against corrosion and able to provide a smooth surface for
the top layers of paint without the need for that middle layer, the
spray primer. But the new electracoat was expensive, and the law suits
say that to compensate for the increase in cost, the automakers dropped
the spray primer from some models of cars and trucks.

(Car on assembly line driving into pool of liquid; robot painting cars;
man inspecting paint on car in factory; car driving out of liquid pool
in factory; robot painting cars; cars on assembly line)

Mr. ROBERT BELL: The problem with it is that the layer they took out
was the hardworking one.

HANSEN:	(Voiceover) Robert Bell is a chemical engineer with expertise
in why paint systems fall apart. He was hired by the plaintiffs in one
of the lawsuits against Ford, to analyze some of the effected vehicles.
Bell and other paint experts say the new electracoat was extremely
sensitive to the sun's UV rays. Rays that spray primer would have
helped to block. 'In effect,' Bell says, 'taking away spray primer was
like taking away sunscreen, leaving the cars and trucks out to bum andpeel.'

(Bell pointing to computer screen; cars with peeling paint; someone
peeling paint)

Mr. BELL: They obviously thought it was worth the risk to try. They
would have saved a lot of money. So, it was a gamble.

HANSEN:	(Voiceover) Ford has denied that eliminating the spray primer
was a cost cutting measure. The company has said it's test initially
showed the new paint to be very durable. GM and Chrysler wouldn't
comment on the lawsuits.  But both Ford and GM have acknowledged
problems resulting from the elimination of spray primer. In fact, in
1992, GM sent this service bulletin to all its dealers, alerting them
to a potential peeling problem on an extensive number of its 1988 to
1992 trucks. Explaining that the problem could occur on vehicles that
did not have primer.

(Cars being painted; cars with peeling paint; documents with some lines enlarged)

HANSEN:	DATELINE obtained these documents produced by Ford in
connection with one of the lawsuits that suggests the company knew it
had a problem well before the public did. One 1991, memo alerted the
company to a link between peeling and the removal of spray primer and
two other document assert the automaker did not adequately test the new
primer-free system before it started to use it.

(Voiceover) But in court papers Ford claims it took steps to fix its
own problem as soon as the company figured out the cause. By 1994, Ford
factories that weren't using spray primer had added it to the assemblylines.

(Cars being assembled in plant)

HANSEN:	Ford, GM, and Chrysler, all targets of lawsuits over peeling
paint declined our requests for on camera interviews. But all three
companies insist you can't blame peeling on one single cause, since a
variety of factors from climate to acid rain to how the vehicles are
cared for, can cause paint to peel.

Unidentified Man #3: You can't even wash it because if you wash it then
the primer starts to wash off also.

HANSEN:	(Voiceover) Still, the owners or peeling cars and trucks find
it hard to believe this awful condition is either bad luck or theirfault. 

(Cars with peeling paint; owners talking about their cars)

Unidentified Woman #8: This car is garage kept. You know, it's not out
in the environment so, I don't know what's going on with it.

HANSEN:	Have you driven this truck hard?

Mr. RILEY: No. It only has 36,000 miles on it.

HANSEN:	Have you left it out in the sun?

Mr. RILEY: No. It's-it's had the same treatment as all of my other
cars, which never had this kind of a problem.

HANSEN:   Acid rain?

Mr. RILEY: Then all of them would get it.

HANSEN: (Voiceover) And paint experts tend to agree that it takes more
than harsh sun or lack of care to make vehicles peel like this.

(Cars with peeling paint)

Mr. JOHN SOTO: A paint should not peel in the first 10, 11 years
for any reason, short of massive chemical dumping on the paint.

HANSEN:	(Voiceover) John Soto, a certified automotive painting
instructor, who has painted over 15,000 cars and trucks, says that
while paint shouldn't peel he agrees with the automakers that there are
many reasons why it can peel. But Soto adds that most of those problems
originate inside the factory. That environmental factors like acid rain
cause erosion of the top coat, not peeling. And that no amount of
washing or waxing will prevent peeling.

(Man preparing car for repainting; Soto looking at car; car on assembly
line; car getting rained on)

Mr. SOTO: It's just impossible to put the blame on a customer for
something that he had nothing to do with to begin with.

HANSEN:	(Voiceover) That's the reason owners of peeling cars and trucks
say that no matter what caused their paint to peel, they shouldn't have
to pay to fix it. And some people say what really wants to make them
blow a gasket is how the companies respond when they complain. 

(Paint peeling off cars)

Mr. MIKE ANASTACIO: They won't listen. They won't listen to reason and
they play you for a fool.

HANSEN:	(Voiceover) Mike and Carol Anastacio own a black 1988, Jeep
Cherokee. At least, it used to be black.

(Anastacios getting out of car; closeup of paint-peeling hood)

Mr. ANASTACIO: If I wait long enough, it's going to be a gray car.
Because you can see it's getting grayer by the day

HANSEN:	(Voiceover) The Anastacio's say their jeep started to peel in
1991, but their dealer refused to repaint the Jeep for free because the
warranty on the paint had expired. And a Chrysler representative would
only offer the couple $500 toward the purchase of a new Jeep. 

(Jeep with peeling paint; Jeep dealer; Chrysler symbol; car with peeling paint)

Mr. ANASTACIO: I mean, at this point, why would I want a new Jeep when
I-this happens. What's my guarantee that something like this isn't
going to happen again.

HANSEN:	Well, a lot of people would say, and maybe Chrysler would say
that, 'look, you've got 114-something thousand miles on it. You've got
a pretty good ride out of this car for what you've paid for it.'

Mr. ANASTACIO: Mechanically, I'll agree. The-the problem didn't occur
when the car had 100,000 miles on it. It occurred when the car had
probably 40,000 miles on it and we've been fighting this for two years
now. And the problem goes back five years.

HANSEN:	What should the auto companies have done for these consumers?

Mr. DITLOW: Ford, GM, and Chrysler, all should have sent out notices to
consumers saying, 'Does your car have peeling paint? If it does we want
to repaint it for you for free because it's our fault not your fault.'

HANSEN:	(Voiceover) The big three automakers say they have done
everything possible to reasonably satisfy customers.  Chrysler told
DATELINE it considers each case individually, sometimes covering all or
part of the cost of repainting. GM says it's dealers have been given
broad discretion to address paint problems. And Ford points out that 15
million vehicles are sold in the US each year and the vast majority
have no paint problem whatsoever. And all three automakers say they
have repainted hundreds of thousands of cars and trucks on a case by
case basis, even after their warranties had expired to make sure their
customers were satisfied. But it's clear there are still plenty out
there who are not.

(Ford, GM, and Chrysler logos; documents with some lines enlarged; man
sanding car; cars being repainted; cars with peeling paint)

Mr. ANASTACIO: Right now it's-it's like we all did this. We all
conspired to have our cars look like this. We all did something wrong.
I mean, what did we do? We bought a car, we care for it in a reasonable
manner, and this is what we get.

PHILLIPS:	One of the lawsuits against Ford for eliminating a step in
the painting process has now been certified a class action suit. Ford
is appealing. There are at least four other lawsuits pending against
Ford, GM, and Chrysler. But by the time they're resolved many of the
peeling cars and trucks now on the road may well have been retired to
the junkyard.