Orange peel: who cares?

Each year, automotive manufacturers spend the equivalent of millions of pounds sterling on measuring the paint surface defect known as 'orange peel'. This paper uncovers the near invisibility of orange peel to customers and questions the need for this expenditure on on-line orange peel measurement. Face-to-face survey techniques were used to establish that customers either did not perceive the paint feature known as orange peel as detrimental to a surface or could not differentiate between surfaces with differing amounts of orange peel. This leads to the suggestion that assumptions made about the need to measure orange peel could be examined, and, if measurement is found to be unnecessary, costs in the automotive industry could be reduced.