Coleton from Out of Spec Detailing gave the Rivian R2 a 9 out of 10 on exterior fit and finish after running a customer-delivered car through his full build-quality review. He said on camera that he expected to find the opposite.
The car was a Launch Edition R2 Performance in Catalina Cove, $57,990 before the $2,000 paint, on the no-cost 21-inch tungsten all-season wheels. It had just come out of a full PPF kit. The installer who wrapped it sat in for the review, and he had put 2,229 miles on the car over three weeks.
Coleton has been covering Rivian build quality since the first R1T deliveries. He was there through the ramp, he was there for Gen 2, and he shows up to these with a feeler gauge instead of an impression. That is why the score lands the way it does in the detailing world. These are the people who see the same panel gaps on fifty cars a month.
Measuring the exterior
On the R2, the numbers came back tight. Hood gaps ran around 5 mm up top and under 3 mm lower down. Door gaps landed near 3.5 mm. Driver side matched passenger side closely enough that he stopped bothering to measure some of it twice. He praised the headlight housings and the way the front bumper meets them, then spent a while on the plastic moldings along the rocker, an area he has been complaining about on R1 for years. The clip fitment problems he sees on R1S well into production are not on this car. The frameless window design removes an alignment step entirely. He liked a few of the design decisions for reasons unrelated to gaps. Metallic gray on the lower bumper instead of gloss black should scratch less. The small vents ahead of the rear wheels should cut down on rock chips down the flanks. And the separate rear bumperette replaces the enormous wraparound panel that has been costing R1 owners thousands of dollars to repair.
The nitpicks came next, and he was clear that they are all they are. Paint is missing about a quarter-inch along the hood edge, which reminded him of early Teslas. A front fender flare on the driver’s side needs a crank to pull it in. One rear door handle sits deeper than the rest. A couple of the tailgate light housings stick out slightly. The charge port door was the one he would not give a pass on, because it feels flimsy and does not sit flush against the quarter panel. Under the frunk, there is a trim piece that is supposed to be bonded and was pulling away on both sides, worse on one than the other. The installer had also measured the mirror housings and found the passenger side runs about an inch and a half longer than the driver side. Those mirrors carry three cameras each, and Coleton spent a minute on what that is going to cost the first time somebody clips a garage door frame with one.
He also found paint worn off bolt heads in the frunk area. That one he read as a positive, evidence that cars are being adjusted and inspected before they leave Normal. The door jambs came back clean on the same check.
Haptic buttons and the rear glass
The buttons did not survive. Both men had to press the frunk and liftgate buttons five or six times before anything happened, and neither of them could get the roll-down rear glass to close from outside the car. Coleton called the implementation stupid and gave it a 0 out of 10. His objection is winter, mostly. This is meant to be a phone as a key vehicle, and he does not want to go into the software to open a frunk. The installer added a separate ownership note: bugs on the front camera will disable cruise control until you pull over and wipe them down. That happened to him more than once on the drive.
Inside the R2
The review splits at the beltline. Above it, he found a premium vehicle. The soft-touch materials hold up, the cloth inserts and the copper stitching look good in person, the laser etching on the trim is a nice touch, and he called the cooled seats some of the best he has sat in. Wireless charging finally works after three tries on R1, and it is MagSafe now. There are two glove boxes. Door pockets are enormous.
Below the beltline, he has a real problem. Hard injection-molded plastic covers the lower door cards, the sides of the seats, the rear seat backs, and the cargo floor. The car had permanent scuffs in those areas at 2,000 miles. He argues that a Model 3 or a Model Y costs less and gives you carpet and soft touch in the same spots, and that Rivian should have spent the money to carpet the load areas on a vehicle people are going to load.
Some smaller interior notes came out of it too. Both front seat cushions had a flap that should be clipped underneath, but it wasn’t, so the cushions lift right up. The cupholders take force to move in and out. The second row does not recline. There is one air vent for the entire back of the cabin, though Coleton referenced RivianTrackr’s climate testing (uploading soon) on that and said it does not appear to be a problem in practice. Second row space impressed both of them. The installer is 6’4 and could sit behind his own driving position, and a car seat comparison against his own Model Y showed considerably more clearance in the R2.
Most of this matches what I have seen on my own car. The car Coleton went over was an early one; mine is in the 4100s, and assignments are already running into the 5000s, though VIN order has not been tracking build or delivery order very closely so far, so I would not read a timeline into the sequence. I took delivery of the factory a few weeks ago and drove it 2,500 miles home from Normal.
On the exterior, the only item from his list that shows up on mine is the charge port door, and I do not think that one is unique to my car. Flimsy is the word most R2 owners land on with that part, and it gets touched every time you charge. The plastics I agree with completely. Mine are already picking up scuffs even though I am trying to be careful with them, and another few thousand miles of normal use will make some of that permanent. The haptic buttons are where I stand out. Mine have been consistent, and I have not had to press anything five or six times to get a response, so whatever he ran into may come down to that specific car or to where the software was sitting at the time.
Early VINs, early days
Coleton put a caveat on all of it. He asked out loud whether this particular car got extra attention because of who owns it, and he brought up that early R1Ts were also excellent before the ramp went sideways. He plans to run the review again as VINs climb, and again once cars start coming out of Georgia.
