Paint Striping and Vehicle Wraps: Which Voids Your Paint Warranty?

Custom paint striping and lettering, if done correctly, can help brand your corporate fleet—so can vehicle wraps. On the other side of the effectiveness of both, which of these marketing tools will void your paint warranty?

Manufacturer Warranties

Depending on the automaker, most paint warranties coincide with normal vehicle warranties—3 years or 36,000 miles. Some manufacturers like BMW and Audi have longer paint warranties; it simply depends on the manufacturer.

When it comes to vehicle body rust, those warranties are usually higher—5 years or 80,000 miles.

Here at Sunrise Signs, we’ve looked at many different ways to rejuvenate an older fleet with vehicle wraps and hide signs of wear and tear or rust, but what if you skip the vehicle wraps, partial wraps or vinyl lettering and opt for custom paint striping and painted graphics instead?

When new vehicles first enter your fleet, they do come with the manufacturer’s warranty that includes exterior paint. If you’ve purchased pre-owned vehicles for your fleet that still have some existing manufacturer warranty left on them, what remains on the warranty will also cover the paint. So, the real question here is will custom paint striping void your paint warranty?

The answer: You bet!

The Problem with Paint Striping & Graphics

Custom paint striping and the ability to paint graphics is truly an artistic talent and we’re not knocking it, but to use this process for fleet or business branding, you could be harming your fleet more than helping it.

Your marketing department may have come up with an awesome logo design they say will only work with the “depth” paint provides. There’s just not a vinyl color out there a company could use to create your design—it’s impossible, they say.

Convinced, you employ an artisan to carefully paint the logo, add your company name—oh and the telephone number too and why not your website address and some tasteful striping as well?

You’ll end up with a nice looking fleet but if there is a problem with the manufacturer paint—it starts to peel or cloud up and you ask the dealership about warranty repairs to the paint, you’ll be laughed out of the service department.

In addition, what if your artist of choice just can’t find the right colors anymore—that must-have color? Or, maybe they’ve moved on or passed the company to an inexperienced family member or friend? How will your fleet custom paint graphics and text come out on new fleet vehicles?

Finally, with paint stripes and painted logos, text or graphics, when it’s time to sell your company or fleet vehicles, you’ll gain a lower resale value because the only way to rid the vehicle of the painted elements is to sand and repaint it.

The Better Choice

One myth we’d like to clear up right away is vehicle wraps also provide depth—three dimensional in fact. Another myth—the variety of colors in vinyl film wraps from manufacturers like 3M and Avery are vast.

Further, full body vehicle wraps are 100 percent removable as are partial wraps or vehicle vinyl lettering. Compared to paint stripes and painted logos, vehicle wraps actually help to protect original manufacturer paint. Even if you find warranty paint problems when removing your fleet vehicle wraps, as long as it’s due to flaws in the manufacturer paint your warranty remains intact.

As far as creating exact matched designs for brand building, vehicle wrap designs created by our in-house graphic designs are saved digitally so reordering or adding more wraps to your fleet is never, ever a problem. Dare we say it, even if we sold our company tomorrow (won’t happen), the new owner would still have your saved designs unlike the wondering artist.

Partial wraps and vehicle vinyl lettering and graphics are the choice for fleet managers and business owners who may not desire vehicles to be wrapped entirely—and these are removable as well—no fuss or muss and no voided paint warranty.

Time management is also another problem with custom paint striping or painting logos on fleet vehicles. The process takes longer and that means your fleet isn’t out there working for you and helping to build your corporate brand. With the vehicle wrap process, at least the one we implement, we understand the importance of time management to ensure your fleet runs at optimal levels during the wrapping process.

Don’t Paint—Wrap!

Before you’re convinced of the paint design, let us show you how fleet vehicle wraps will get fleets noticed, build your brand and protect original manufacturer paint.

Custom painting can also be very expensive where the cost of vehicle wraps is more affordable than traditional advertising methods—and custom paint jobs.

Read our Business Owner’s Guide to Vehicle Wraps and our Fleet Manager’s Resource Guide to Fleet Wraps and you’ll be convinced wrapping vehicles to brand—or even rebrand is the smarter choice.

So, we say, skip the painting and don’t void your paint warranty and wrap with confidence instead!