.....
I noticed a lot of chips on the silver, it seemed excessive for a lower milage car. I found some others with the similar options and I changed my mind, and I'm going for Gun Metal Metallic. I may go with pearl white too. So compared to other vehicles, do you think that Nissan paint chips easily? Do you know if Nissans are prone to rusting easier than other brands? I have heard mixed reviews of people saying that the paint and primer are thin and the exposed metal rusts easily.
Paint chips are subjective, and highly indicative of the owner/driver. My wife's Denali for instance has excellent "red jewel tint coat" GM paint. It has held up extremely well for a 2005, and didn't have a single chip in it. (well maybe 2 or 3 but THAT'S IT). But.... after I did a paint correction last fall she ended up driving down a freshly paved road, and..... being as I am ALWAYS after her not to follow so close, sure enough..... she came home after a week of driving back and forth on that road going to work and WHAM! Checked the paint that Friday night and thought
she'd be better off getting a good beating! 
There must have been 2 dozen chips on the hood! The good part is it's just to the primer, no bare metal. The bad part is it's "red jewel tint coat" where the CC is actually tinted. Not exactly easy to do touchup on.
Honestly.... I think a lot of it (paint quality) these days goes back purely to the price point of the cheapest vehicle in the lineup. Seems it used to be that a manufacturer had one level of paint, both for the cheap and expensive vehicles where the cheap ones benefited the most. Then again, those were the solvent paint days versus todays waterborne paints. Pre "ultra thin" paint days you could depend on a film build that just stood up to whatever you could throw at it. Now I'm not a painter, (
and know enough to be dangerous at best) :laughing: but waterborne has changed in the last few years, higher solvent base, faster drying times, ready to shoot clear MUCH faster. Which means the shop that used to be able to shoot 3 cars a day now shoots 12. But for some reason (from what I've seen from my end at least) it still chips much MUCH easier than paints in the past. :dunno:
One thing that I'd say still holds true however is the color of the paint can be directly correlated to the hardness (of at least the basecoat). Knowing that carbon black is the pigment in black (by far the softest) and titanium oxide being the pigment in white (same thing they use in sandpaper) white, (and by default) lighter metallic
should be a bit more durable. Doesn't mean they ARE... but they should be. Metallics are heavier, and knowing the penny pinchers as such, they probably put less material in (what to them) is *more* paint going on..... resulting in as thin of a film build as possible to keep bare metal from showing through.
Of course none of that answers whether or not the Nissan or Acura will have the most durable paint over the long run. Would like to help a bit more with that, but in my experience how the car has been maintained prior to your ownership is the most critical point there. Were it me.... I'd get the one with zero paint chips, and protect that puppy ASAP.
