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Buick Perfects Three-Wet Paint Process for Verano

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2015 Buick Verano

2015 Buick Verano
Photo: © General Motors

Here’s something you might not know: roughly 70% of all energy used in the vehicle assembly process is put toward the paint process. The reason for this is that cars must be painted three times over—first, a base coating; followed by a metallic coat; and finally in a clear coat.

The energy used to do this—around 2.6 megawatt hours—is roughly equivalent to that required to power a single US household for nine weeks. Now take that process and do it thousands of times over every single year.

Back in 2011, GM’s Orion Assembly Plant pioneered a “three-wet” paint process that would not only use two-fifths of the energy required by the traditional process, but it would also serve to make the Buick Verano—the vehicle for which the process with pioneered—look shinier and be more durable than ever before.


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GM still uses three-wet paint for the Verano, and it has moved the process to its facilities in Fairfax, Kansas, and Flint, as well as to the SGM Wuhan and SGM Norsom plants in China.


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