Our bumpers absolutely require a primer, but it's not the type of primer one applies to steel surfaces after pretreatment and E-coating. It's technically called AD-PRO or adhesion promoter. If this process was not applied, your bumpers and injected-molded painted parts wouldn’t make it through the first car wash w/o the top coat peeling like a bad sunburn. I've worked at Honda's US manufacturing operations and can assure you that skipping this process isn’t going to happen. That being said, paint chemistry, paint temp/humidity during application and oven curing could present issues being raised. But my notion is that we, US Mfg'g, use a 2-k clear coat process with thermal exhaust abatement of VOC's. Japan may take the waterborne approach thus reducing capital costs for abatement and fuel to feed the abatement beast. Remember, we pay a lot less for natural gas than the other developed nations, excluding Russia but are they that developed, i.e. Ladas
