A Mazda CX-30 lessee says she walked into her dealership with the plastic trim on one side of her two-year-old car visibly melted and was told it would not be covered by warranty because the dealership sees it happen all the time.
Her TikTok recounting the conversation has hit more than 103,000 views and prompted Mazda USA to post a comment offering to investigate. But it also featured two threads in the replies that complicate the story: a long-running history of melting Mazda interior parts going back to the early 2010s, and a real phenomenon known to damage cars parked near certain reflective buildings.
The video was posted on June 13 by Dallas, Texas-based Brunella Pratesi, who goes by gabooboo (@officialgabooboo) on TikTok. Her caption tagged Mazda USA directly and asked, “What is happening?” The clip is shot to camera with photographs of the car’s melted side overlaid in the second half.
“Not Covered By Warranty”
Gabooboo opens the video by talking about a recommendation she now regrets. “Two years ago I decided to go from a Honda to a Mazda, and I got a lease,” she says. “I got a lease because I heard that Mazdas were great cars. They were reliable. Their customer service was wonderful. And I even recommended Mazdas to two of my friends, who went to the same dealership as me and got cars there.”
Then friends told her the side of her car looked melted. She had not seen it herself because the damage is on the passenger side. The side mirror, the rear quarter cladding, and the trim running down to the front are deformed and bubbled. “Like the plastic is completely melted,” she says.
The dealership’s response, as she tells it, was twofold. “They said that it was not covered by warranty, that their cars melt all the time. And then I was asked where I work, and that if I work in downtown Dallas, a lot of the reflections from the sun to the buildings hit the cars and melt them.”
She says she does not work downtown, parks in a garage at work, and parks behind her apartment building, which has no reflective glass nearby. “Mind you, cars are supposed to be made well enough to be able to handle being in the sun.”
The dealership called it wear and tear. The quoted repair cost is “thousands of dollars” on a car she leased specifically to avoid that kind of risk.
Mazda’s Melting Problem
The claim that Mazdas melt is not new. In October 2014, a class action was filed in the District Court for the Central District of California against Mazda over 2009-2011 Mazda 3 and Mazda 6 dashboards that the complaint said “do not withstand exposure to sunlight, melt, emit a noxious chemical smell.”
Several commenters under gabooboo’s video described the same problem on earlier models. “I had a 2010 CX-7,” wrote Maddy Walsh. “You can see on the mirror where it’s literally caved in from melting.” Spider, another commenter, surfaced the 2014 case directly: “Those who find this hard to believe must not remember the 2014 class action suit related to the Mazda dashboards melting when they used an unstable plasticizer.”
The 2026 generation of complaints is about the exterior. A commenter going by Melon said the gloss-black B and C pillars on her 2024 CX-5 melted within a year, the dealership repaired them under warranty once, and refused when it happened again. Samanthaanto reported a 2022 CX-30 with multiple melted plastic locations and a quote over $1,000.
Several current and former Mazda employees in the thread wrote that they had never seen the problem, including service-department staff in California, Arizona, and Oklahoma—making the Dallas cluster the dealership described, if it is real, geographically specific.
Can Sunlight Melt Cars?
The dealership’s explanation—that parking downtown might cause melting—is not plucked out of thin air. The phenomenon of concentrated reflected sunlight melting plastic on parked cars is real and documented.
In September 2013, the curved glass facade of London’s 20 Fenchurch Street, nicknamed the Walkie-Talkie, focused sunlight onto a Jaguar XJ parked across the street hard enough to melt its panels, mirrors and badges. A physicist quoted by National Geographic compared the effect to a magnifying glass and noted the building was using “exactly the same principle that was used to light the Olympic torch.”
Whether anything similar happened in gabooboo’s case has not been demonstrated, however. Per her account, she parks in a covered garage at work and against a brick building at home. And the dealership did not ask her to show the photos.
Other commenters who said they live in Dallas, including one Mazda CX-30 owner who works downtown, said their cars are fine. The dealership’s argument that a Death-Ray defect is the customer’s fault rather than a manufacturer’s problem only works if the customer is in the path of one, and gabooboo’s says she was not.
Lemon Law And The Corporate Reply
Several commenters suggested gabooboo seek relief under Texas’s lemon law or get the dealership to put the “normal wear and tear” finding in writing for use at lease-end.
Texas’ lemon law, administered by the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles, covers both purchased and leased new vehicles in their first 24 months or 24,000 miles, but only where a warranty-covered defect “substantially impairs the use or market value” of the car or creates a serious safety hazard. The owner has to show either four documented repair attempts for the same defect, or that the car has been out of service for 30 days or more. Per her account, gabooboo’s situation has cleared neither test as of the video.
A person who identified themselves as a service advisor at a Honda dealership replied to say Honda and Acura have seen similar plastic-melting issues but have absorbed the cost on the customer’s behalf. Mazda USA responded from its verified TikTok account to tell her to send a direct message so it could “help investigate further.” Gabooboo confirmed she had done so and later added that she had opened a corporate case.
Motor1 reached out to gabooboo via TikTok direct message and to Mazda North American Operations via email for additional comment. We’ll be sure to update this if they respond.
