Poll for Those with Paint Blistering / Bubbling Defect

[Orchardbike]

My 2015 Evora 400 had bubbling on the rear, drivers side wheel arch. My 2023 Emira has it (badly) on both doors. I’m waiting for Colchester to confirm Lotus accept it’s a warranty issue and confirm timescale.

 

[Foxy87]

Yes but what if the blisters show after the 3 year paint warranty? Or the doors got replaced but the blisters appear again after a certain time?

I guess we will see in one or two years…

 

[VR1]

Is there still no fix for this issue? Lotus is just replacing the defective doors with more defective doors? If so these cars are going to take a hard hit value wise once they come out of warranty….

What’s the point of having them replace the doors with the same doors again? Seems like you’d just have the same issue again. I’ve been waiting for Lotus to get all the kinks on this car worked out but at this point it seems I’m just going to go with a GTS 4.0 at this rate if this keeps dragging on for a few more months.

The Emira is the *only* car that interests me (the 4.0 is a bit of a distant second), but it seems Lotus has no intention of fixing this issue (based on 2024+ build date cars still having this issue). Owning a car that requires a $5-10k door replacement every 12-18 months is of no interest to me. Hopefully Lotus comes up with a solution in the next few weeks/months instead of screwing over customers or some aftermarket company comes up with CF door skins.

Unfortunately I’ve already booked airline tickets from the US to the UK late next summer for my GF and I to do the factory tour with how excited I was to get an Emira next year :/. Seems I got lured in by the Lotus marketing team

 

[Foxy87]

I am in the exact same boat as you. GTS 4.0 is a distant second. But this paint problem is really scratching my head. Plus on facebook group someone just posted he now has bubbles on the rear quater (after Lotus already changed doors). This is getting ridiscolous.

 

[seriously]

So today I checked out all the emiras which where sitting on the lot of my close Lotus dealer (4mins drive from my home). There were about 10 Emiras sitting outside of which about 5 had paint blisterings on either one or two doors. I checked them not very carefully and they were also covered in snow so there is a good chance that more than 5 cars of the 10 were affected. There were i4s and V6, didnt make any difference.

This really is concerning for someone who wants to buy used. I didnt plan to buy new but I dont know if buying used is still even an option. I only want this car and no other, so I am kind of in a dilemma…

Might going to confront the dealer next year and see what they are doing against it.

View attachment 56586
View attachment 56587

Doesn’t feel like the best storage condition. But yes I hear you on the paint blistering issue and questioning whether it is truly fixed or not.

 

[Beardedbradley]

Sadly it appears to be the best way to store them whilst still under warranty.

 

[JonFuller]

I think we need to establish exactly what's causing this blistering (as it appears that Lotus are not too interested).

It wouldn't surprise me to learn that a bean-counter at Lotus has decided that changing the doors on the ones that are affected, 'once' during warranty, is the cheapest option to get beyond the 3 years & bollox to anything happening beyond that legal responsibility!

It's a shame that the failing of a component manufactured by a 3rd party, could give Lotus such a bad rep... They have enough on their plate with their own shortcomings & failings, they don't need any help!

Anyways, Is it water permeating from/through the panels from behind?
Or is it some chemical reaction that's happening within the skin after an amount of time from production, or under certain humidity / temperature situations?

At least if it were the simpler thing of moisture somehow getting through the skin (Osmosis??), sealing the inside of the door skin with 2k paint or some similar sealing compound could potentially fix the issue (all be it a bandaid), but if it's some weird reaction going on withing the composite skin laminate itself, that'd be rather worrying especially as it appears that the later cars are far from exempt from this problem.