Performing the rather odious (when its very cold and you'd rather be doing something else, like shopping for old Siekos on eBay) task of changing the wheels on my car. From summer to winter tyres, in case you live in a tropical country and don't know about this.
I usualy take this opportunity to clean the wheels that are coming off the car before putting them away. And so I was cleaning the filthy 16" alloy wheels that my Polo GT was supplied with. And musing on the qaulity of VW rims...
Now I am a little careless with cleaning my wheels, and drive fairly hard, so there was fairly extensive coating of brake dust...and beneath it, pitting in the paint. Hmmm, sad, and those wheels are only 14 months old. Yet the wheels on my previous car, a 2007 e90 320i, never suffered from this. You wiped off the brake dust and beneath it the paint was fine. And I remember making this same comparison, years ago in South Africa between an old e36 320i and a South Africa made CitiGolf (Golf Mk1) that I owned at the time. If you didnt clean those VW mags every month or so the paint took damage.
What can we learn from all of this? Well obviously: Buy a premium car and you don't have to wash your wheels as often.
