Part of the reason for buying a beautiful car is for it to be...beautiful. I agree about function over form, but only to a certain extent. You're always going to have to defensively park if you want to keep your car looking nice, thats just the long and the short of it.
I like the way the mouldings look on the car, at least the 07-09, but if you don't like them don't suffer through having them on just to protect against the possibility that one day you might have a door ding.