Cars with no side-molding.

After my car was totalled recently, I've been looking at various different models from various brands. For some weird reason, side-molding seems to be being fazed out. I have no idea why.

Side-molding is great for keeping dents from popping up on your car doors. Especially in a parking lot where some jack@$$ decides to slam his car door into your's, just so he can climb into his car a bit faster.

Perhaps the various car-makers decided that side-molding is not fashionable. Nearly all of them have removed the offending feature from their new models. Case in point, the 2009 Pontiac G6 GT I rented a few days ago. The '08 models have side-molding. The new ones, don't.... I'm not sure when it happened. The dent was small, but still a bit noticeable. Yup, someone slammed their car door into the G6's door; and left a dent. Luckily, I had gotten extra insurance on the car from the rental place. So I wasn't responsible for the damage.

Still, it makes no sense to me why such a pragmatic feature is being removed from so many up-and-coming 2009 models. I mean.... How fashionable is it going to look when a new car has dents all over its doors??

im with you on that. i dont know who decides what the cars look like anymore. it HAS to be about style i guess. nobody wants to buy a car that does things correctly, just a car that looks good and eats up gas. am i right or am i right?:shakehead

Costs $$ to make and install side moldings - gotta keep costs down, right? Right?

I dislike the looks of side moldings, one reason I park way out in the lot and walk. It's a cheap add on from Auto Zone or Pep Boys if you just have to have it. Clean the area very well with solvent and heat the adhesive before application.

BIGIRON said:

I dislike the looks of side moldings, one reason I park way out in the lot and walk. It's a cheap add on from Auto Zone or Pep Boys if you just have to have it. Clean the area very well with solvent and heat the adhesive before application.

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Even if you park in an isolated spot, you still sometimes get some @$$ who just has to park next to you. Aftermarket side-molding doesn't always work. The doors on the 2009 Pontiac G6 are sculpted. The upper portion of the doors extends out a bit. That's where the dent was on the rental car.

I agree that side-molding is not the prettiest part of a car, but the alternative is driving around with doors full of dents.

+1

I'm know as parking in "Guam" whereever I go. Evena t work Ihave the lone car way way way out in left field

BIGIRON said:

I dislike the looks of side moldings, one reason I park way out in the lot and walk. It's a cheap add on from Auto Zone or Pep Boys if you just have to have it. Clean the area very well with solvent and heat the adhesive before application.

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Amen to that. I always try to park with the left side of my car close in to a curb, island, or shopping car corral, and a large buffer of space on the passenger side (most people in this area tend to pull in nose first). With that said, my car does indeed have side molding. :wave:

You are forgetting that as well as cars, car manufacturers also sell parts such as plastic trim, doors and paint; anyone like to hazard a guess as to the relative profit margins of the aforementioned items?

Andrew

It is a conspiracy: Manufacturers, body shops and property owners also design the parking lots in such a way to make parking places narrower. The plastic side molding has saved me many times. The SUV's...

I have a 2006 Chevy HHR that has no side mouldings at all.

And I have a nice ding in the rear fender where someone managed to hit it. It had to have been a pickup truck that did it, as the area that has the ding is right where the rear fender starts to slope back in towards the passenger cabin.

I made my own with 1/4" steel plate. :devil:

jzmtl said:

I made my own with 1/4" steel plate. :devil:

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Is that to prevent dents or merely survival in Montreal traffic? :laughing:

Side Moldings are Ok as long as they are the same color with the body. I don't like the flat black moldings that stands out from the rest of the car. I adjusted my step bar of my SUV 2 inches farther away from the body to prevent Ash holes from banging their doors to my vehicle. Works great too, I can actually see different colored scratches on my side step bars.

I don't know if all vehicles have OEM body-color-matched side moldings available, but some of them do. However, they are now frequently an extra option instead of standard. And it's an extra option that dealers often choose to not add when ordering cars for their lot stock.

When I bought a new car about a year ago, I insisted on having OEM floor mats and body-color side moldings. For the floor mats, they had to take some out of one of the few other cars on the lot that had come with some (and special-ordered some replacements for that car). For the side moldings, they didn't bother to keep any in stock and so had to special-order them and have me come back a week or two later. (I talked them into including these things at no additional cost to compensate for some screw-ups they'd made, and I don't recall what they would've cost normally.)

I guess people just don't care about keeping their stuff in decent condition for a decent length of time anymore, for floor mats and side moldings to be so unpopular that the dealers don't bother to include them anymore or even stock spares.

For everyone who is mad about door dings, check out this website: Parking by design

Hilarious, but great advice!

Lichtschalter said:

For everyone who is mad about door dings, check out this website: Parking by design

Hilarious, but great advice!

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As a very 'defensive' parker, I agree, this looks like a useful article. :twothumbs

Did you see this picture from that website!

I've never been a fan of side molding in general, but I can appreciate it on vehicles that might take a pounding in traffic or offroad. And for that purpose I like molding that is unpainted and won't show scratches or cracks easily.

My '94 Jeep ZJ is a Laredo trim, so it's swathed in vast quantities of gray unpainted plastic. Takes a licking.

stitch_paradox said:

Side Moldings are Ok as long as they are the same color with the body. I don't like the flat black moldings that stands out from the rest of the car. I adjusted my step bar of my SUV 2 inches farther away from the body to prevent Ash holes from banging their doors to my vehicle. Works great too, I can actually see different colored scratches on my side step bars.

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What are Ash holes? :thinking: :shrug:

I have a strong dislike of side molding on most cars, and have removed it on several cars in the past, where doing so wouldn't leave any bare holes or other marks in the paint/body. Side molding may help some cars some of the time avoid door dings, but that is assuming the the molding lines up with the exact spot the other person's door, bumper, shopping cart, etc is at, and that isn't often the case.

None of our five cars has factory side molding (thank goodness), although our Subaru has some lower body cladding that comes a fair bit higher than I'd like. None of our cars have any sort of dents, dings, or other body damage, mainly because my wife and I are very careful with how and where we park. My wife sometimes wishes for a beater car that she can park anywhere she wants and not worry about getting damaged, but then she looks at cars owned by friends or family members that have numerous dents, dings, and scrapes from careless parking and careless drivers, and is kinda glad all of our cars are in excellent shape. Besides the benefit of nicer looking cars, you get the added health benefit of the exercise of walking 1/4 mile farther by parking in the farthest corners of the parking lot