word order - Noun-adjective-noun: Can a noun phrase have an adjective in the middle?

Can a noun phrase have an adjective in the middle as in the following examples?

1. car new tires


2. salad high-calorie dressing


3. house external wall


4. nitrogen fine droplets

These examples seem ungrammatical to me, but the writer (who is not a native speaker of English) says that bringing the adjective to the front of the noun phrase would be incorrect, because, for example, in number 4, the droplets are fine, not the nitrogen.

Are there any rules that govern this sort of thing? And is the potential of incorrect adjective-noun modification pointed out by the writer a legitimate issue?

Answer

You cannot interpose an adjective between the nouns of a noun phrase. As the Collins Cobuild English Grammar states:

When a noun group contains both an adjective and a noun modifier the
adjective is placed in front of the noun modifier.

In most cases the noun phrase will be correctly interpreted, but it is legitimate to be concerned about potential ambiguity. For example, most people will probably interpret new car tires as meaning car tires that are new. So if, in fact, you mean that the cars are new but not necessarily the tires then you would be best advised to say the tires of new cars.