Some repairers have had 'brittle paint' occur on jobs they've done. Cause was eventually traced to paint additives which accelerate the drying process. These additives were routinely added to solvent based finishes without incident but the faster drying caused the (different formulation) water based paints to become brittle and chip easily.
If lexus use these additives (which they may not) OR high bake ovens (which they almost certainly do) to accelerate drying and speed up production then they may be compromising the durability of the finish in the interests of efficiency.
It's apparently pretty widely known in the trade that BMW have had similar problems and reverted to traditional paints until they sorted it out. Naturally they didn't make a song and dance about it as they were having to respray lots of customers cars and the environmental lobby would have had a field day at the reintroduction of solvent based painting
One thing is common though. The shops i saw all accept the IS200 in particular has paint problems which they're at a loss to explain ... apart from the above.
So - perhaps we have an answer here ???
