So I've ordered OEM side body moulding from 2 VERY reputable dealers who have both pulled a bait and switch on me. I ordered the OEM - which is the body color and the end is either silver or black and the guards are of a very high Toyota quality. Not have sent me some second grade generic and universally made crap from a company called Dawn Enterprises. Dawn Enterprises Inc. They have both admitted to sending me the "wrong item" but I am now convinced that they do this in hopes of the customer not realizing it. This is what I ordered > (red example) This is what I got > (silver example)
The OEM moldings look great. I just noticed that the Prius Chat Shop offers 4 different kinds of body side moldings for the 2016 Prius. The Toyota OEM like you want, and 3 other varieties. It may have been an honest mistake by your dealer? (Do they actually do any good? Every time I got a door ding on my Camry, it totally missed the molding!)
Duh! Of course the ones that miss the molding will leave dings. But what fraction don't miss the molding? From your comment, it appears that doors engaging with the molding don't leave dings, so in that sense they work. On my spouse's car, only one ding went all the way through the molding to the metal. That was witnessed, and it was a very angry mother who flung her door open extremely hard while yelling at a child. When my first car (no molding) and second car (new, with molding) were sitting side by side, the dings on the old one very suddenly and strongly stood out. It had been my college car, and had built up almost two dings per inch of door length, plus more on the quarter panels. That next car built up only a small fraction of that amount, mostly from doors that are almost intentionally designed to miss molding, e.g. the rear doors of 4-door cars where the children usually sat (before kids had car seats). The SUV/truck era didn't help either, greatly increasing the rate of mis-matched doors. These days, my (un-molded) cars spend far less time in places likely to create dings.
Taken at a local shopping center, a repurposed pool noodle/float and a length of rope tied onto the side mirror and rear door handle! Honestly, it would work better with a longer rope, so that the noodle hangs lower in the front:
So once again a question posed by a new member has not been addressed, but rather replaced with opinions as to whether or not they should even be doing something. Maybe the OP should be shown the respect of either a relevant answer, or no answer at all from those that can't. ..and where did the OP ask whether side moldings work?
The part number for the Classic silver Toyota OEM body side molding is: PT938-47160-01. I installed it on my car, and really like the looks with the black and sliver accents.
Exactly what I ordered and definitely didn't get. They were $210 discounted to $168 from Nashua Toyota. A photo of them on your car would be GREATLY appreciated !!!!
I negotiated my moldings to be thrown I as part of my sales deal so they were installed after I took delivery of my Prius. I asked to see them before they were installed because I was afraid they would put the wrong color on. I wanted the two tone white and black.
When we first test drove a 16, it had the Toyota moldings on it and I couldn't get past the black accent they had. My eyes were drawn to them like a magnet. They kind of made the rear doors look like they had big scratches unless you were looking directly at them to see the accent. When I talked to the internet manager where we bought our car, he told me that they put the door molding on all their cars along with window tint. I thought "oh well" I can live with it, but was pleasantly surprised when we saw they use the plain molding with no accent color. Toyota part or not, I didn't pay for them but actually like them.
