this is a common occurrence in the auto industry.  i've done a lot of
work in plants working on paint systems and plastic molding machines for
the auto industry.  the engineers and the test lab people can tell you
right away which colors to stay away from when buying their product.
certain pigments just don't hold up over time.  one test i saw at a plant
that made all kinds of pvc products and glue was that they zip tied house
gutters that they made to the chain link fence outside to watch them
degrade over time.  at the time they made brown and white, the brown
failed about 50 percent faster than the white.  to make the brown they
simply doped the white with brown pigment.  my belief is that just works
to "spread" the polymers further apart causing a reduced life span when
exposed to UV radiation.  i believe less bonding between the polymer
particles helps the "unzipping" action that takes place under UV exposure.

jonathan

On Wed, 8 Dec 2004, mark drillock wrote:

> It is not just the dash top that lasts longer in black. All of the brown
> plastic parts seem to suffer far more from sun damage than the same
> parts do in black. I suspect that is one reason why the brown plastic
> interiors were dropped in favor of only black after 87 or so.
>
> I prefer the looks of the brown but the brown parts crumble with age.
> The center rear view mirror is a classic example. Just try to find a
> brown one that isn't falling apart on the back side. The black ones show
> no sign of this that I've seen.
>
> Mark
>
> Tim wrote:
>
> >I am looking to find some solution to recover it, since it is almost
> >impossible to find a replacement (brown) in any better shape than the one I
> >am removing. If worse comes to worse I will either consider replacing a
> >black padding on my brown dash (need to see how it looks) or just replace
> >the entire dash with a black one. The black dashes are much more common and
> >For some reason seem to hold up better............
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>