Keep them on or take it off?

they look a little weird to me

 

A- The have pretty good doublestick tape holding them on!!
B- When you get your first door ding, your gonna regret it!!!

 

Personally, I don't like things like this. It reminds me of when people used to get pinstriping on their cars because "it looks sharp". Not to me it didn't.

On the other hand, is there a practical application to these? Meaning, could they protect your door panels from neighboring car doors tapping your car? In that case it might not be so bad. If this is not the case I'd remove them (or rather, I'd make the dealer remove them for me).

 

The side moldings have a functional purpose, to protect the side of your car from other cars' doors impacts in a parking lot. So, which would you rather have - dings in your doors or a "clean look"? I bought mine and installed them myself to protect my precious Prius.

 

There are no holes or studs under the side moldings but by all means remove them if you don't mind repairs from ignorant jerks who slam their doors into yours. I had to wait a couple of weeks for mine and got one slight mar on my door which fortunately the moldings covered completely.

As careful as I was in parking in the nether regions of large shopping centers with my last car they always seemed to find me and parking away from others was not always possible. One repair cost me a couple of hundred dollars and it wasn't metallic like Pearl Blizzard which will be a bear to match.

It is your car and some people don't seem to mind dents and pings. I certainly do.

I really don't understand how you can look at the side moldings and think they are cosmetic. They are fairly unobtrusive, not in a contrasting color and well designed to prevent the majority of (but obviously not all) door dings. If they were chrome or some other color or if they were way at the bottom of the doors I could understand that. Your car, do what you want.

 

I think they look ok...keep em!

 

Not my cup of tea. I'm sure they're secured with double sided tape, so shouldn't be hard to remove (using dental floss should work well).

Plus, as far as protection goes, if they don't line up with the farthest protruding part of the other car's door, they won't do much good.

 

You'll still get door dings above and below the mouldings due to varying heights of other cars so they're pretty pointless.

 

Agreed. As ultra paranoid as I am on door dings I think these are pretty useless. Although it's possible that you might get very lucky that the car next to you has the right height and shape of door to hit the moulding, murphey's law is not in your favor. You're better off just using defensive parking techniques

As an example take a look a the rear doors of most suv's and note the height and cutout for the wheel well and then imagine a kid in the back seat who probably can't even see your low car over over his windowsill flinging the door open. The mouldings won't even come into play.

Leave them on if you like the looks, but don't believe they will provide any meaningful protection.

 

This is what I was going to say. All of the door dings I get are always higher (from SUVs or cars where the doors are shaped a certain way). But going back to the original question, I would take them off since they ruin the clean body lines on the GenIII Prius.


As for removing them, somebody mentioned dental floss but if you want to use some type of string, use fishing line. It's thinner and cuts through the glue better. But before even going that route, I would just hit it with a hair dryer and spray Goo-Gone (or Goop-Off, or WD-40) and let it soak in there on the adhesive. That stuff will break down the adhesive and that makes pulling the moldings off much easier and keeping the adhesive tape in one piece when pulling it off. Just keep spraying the Goo-Gone as you move along the molding, let it soak, then pull away slowly. When you're done, wash the car in that area to get the solvent off, and then put some wax on a rag or towel and wipe the area afterwards. It'll look like you never had any moldings on there.

 

I prefer the naked look! Besides, that careless kid opening his door into the side of your new car will probably never hit that skinny little molding.

 

Put my moldings on the third week I got my Prius--ordered from the priuschat shop. They have already saved me a ding. Don't see too many on the new cars, however. Strangely I was parked next to an identical Prius in a store parking lot--it had the moldings also. Guess the owner was an old person like me--practical! After driving an Outback for 9 years the Prius looked naked!

 

Not only do I not mind the look of them but I'm considering them for my car. In the past BSM's have protected me from many dents and nicks although not 100% of the time. They are unobtrusive, and more importantly are already on there in the case of your car.

 

Its a style thing whether it looks good or not, so whether or not it looks good might even depend on the car color & rims.

Since you got the white BP car with 15" rims, same as I, the car can actually use the trim to give it some extra "structure/lines", otherwise the car looks a bit stark. Remember, you don't have the 17" rims which help give the car some extra eye-candy to move the wandering eye along the car to the rims - no, you have the 15" rims, and usually the eye doesn't really dwell on those too much. So with that, the car looks a bit naked, and the trim helps. I wouldn't recommend the plastic trim on a car that has the 17" rims however, it doesn't need the extra lines/detail.

My opinion only counts for the White BP car. For a car, such as the blue-ribbon metallic, or a darker car, who knows the trim might actually look worse on it.

So keep it on, it's not that bad, esp. with a white car with the smaller rims! :cheer2:

 

So you don't like cars with pin striping or graphics either, I suppose? Well, I do and I think they make cars like yours just another of the many mundane, plain Janes out there. Go ahead, don't stand out! Me, I like mine to look unique and cool...

 

Since they are already on, leave them on or you will regret it when you get the 1st door ding.

 

I would just hit it with a hair dryer and spray Goo-Gone (or Goop-Off, or WD-40) and let it soak in there on the adhesive. That stuff will break down the adhesive and that makes pulling the moldings off much easier and keeping the adhesive tape in one piece when pulling it off. Just keep spraying the Goo-Gone as you move along the molding, let it soak, then pull away slowly.

Your suggestion may work just fine, but I would like to urge the OP to try the Goo-Gone first on an inconspicuous area of the paint to see if it weakens the paint film. Goo-Gone and similar products contain quite powerful solvents and may permanently affect the paint.

 

When that 1st door ding sits above or below the moldings, he'll regret having them on in the first place!

Better to do defensive parking whenever possible (but not so defensive like parking at an extreme angle in which case you're liable to get keyed from people pissed off at your tactics).