Sheet metal

My friend was saying the sheet metal on his 2010 cayenne gts was garbage. Said it was very thin and the original paint job was not the best quality. I would think the paint jobs would be better with technology getting better but then again, maybe quality went downhill due to some ingredient not being allowed for environmental or health reasons. My question is, is the sheet metal used not as good as pre 996 stuff and thoughts on the paint? Thanks.

Hard to say with 1 data point, generally I've found porsches to be high quality. if you want to see bad quality go look at a few teslas, i dont even like riding in my wifes anymore...

Yeah, I wonder if he just got a dud.

I've got a 964 C2, a 996 C4S, a 991.2 GT3 and a 2019 Cayenne E-Hybrid. I've never even thought about the sheet metal differences between them but there is certainly nothing noticeable about the sheet metal itself, that's for sure. In the 964 years, the metallics were two-stage (base/clear) while the non-metallic paints were single stage (all Glasurit). After the 964, all paint became two-stage. It's also highly automated now so you get less variance obviously. Now, I will say lots of folks with higher end GT cars will get paint correction as soon as they take delivery and before they PPF it but it's not like the air cooled hand painted stuff had amazing finishes that needed nothing. Moe Mistry (owner of glistening perfection, one of the best detail/ppf shops in the US), wrote a post a while back about some of the evolution of Porsche paint over the years which is an interesting read: https://www.6speedonline.com/forums/...t-history.html

Sheet metal on all cars has been getting thinner. This is because of weight reduction to improve fuel economy and improvements in finite element analysis showing where the thickness can be reduced. If you think the Porsche sheet metal is thin go look at a modern Subaru - great cars, but super thin metal. At some point most Euro countries changed to using a water based auto paint for environmental reasons. I do love the smell of lacquer thinner in the morning which I suspect is a minority choice.

Define very thin. By its very nature sheet metal is thin. Does he mean less than 20GA thin? As far as the paint is concerned, did he use a coating thickness gauge? I mean anyone can say it looks terrible but the proof is in the numbers. As far as the 996, I've personally welded an entire floorboard into my car and can say it's 18 to 20GA. Some areas are lapped as well. It didn't "feel" thin to me.

Compared to the Japanese cars I principally worked on in my younger days - my opinion is the raw materials used in the German cars I have principally worked on in my older days is way, way nicer. That would include the sheet metal and coatings and especially the hardware. I can speak relatively intelligently on the sheet metal topic having a habit of cutting stuff off my cars, the porsche stuff seemed really nice to me. The domestic stuff in my opinion falls more on the Japanese end of the spectrum than the German.

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You don't even have to go that far back to see that asian autos are practically disposable. Kia and Hyundai are made of some pretty thin stuff... EVERYWHERE. Domestic is not that far behind either.