Finally had a peek under the seal on our 30th Jan 2014 build Cali SE. So this vehicle is only 7 months old.
Pulled back about 1ft to see whats going on.
Here are 3 pictures of the same area and as you can see,multiple blistering of the paint and the circles in the third picture highlight what looks like red rust stains that must be from the steel in the seal. No point in revealing anymore.
Can't see any corrosion on the front panel, I didn't know it went that far down the side, past the back of the drivers door.
The horizontal lines under the seal look like an imprint of the inside of the seal as if it was put on before the paint had gone hard / cured or whatever they call it on modern paints.
Not surprised by what I have found but still disappointed.Some people think we must be insane spending that amount of money on a vehicle, perhaps they are right!
Not in a rush to report it until they have admitted there is a fault, found the cause and can therefore make a proper repair as I am sure that using a different primer/undercoat and then putting the same old type of seal on will not cure it for very long and all the people having them repaired now will soon be going through it all again.
The waiting time to get these repairs carried out is also making matters worse.
If a roof showing light blistering of the paint like mine could be repaired now then I feel sure you stand a better chance of a long term cure then letting the corrosion get hold and get deeper into the metal. If it penetrates deep into the metal you can't see, with the naked eye, how much metal to remove and by the look of some of the previous photo's in this thread it must be going a quarter of the way through the panel. So is the panel being ground back and then filled?
I think VW need to have a serious look at this problem and get expert advice from say the aircraft industry to solve this problem.
The warranty on both sections of roof also needs to be looked at, 6 years is not enough and will not give any confidence to the long term reputation of these vehicles or VW. It needs to be longer and that date has got to start from when the repair is carried out and not the date of registration, as I am sure this problem is undermining the reputation not only of California's but the whole VW brand.