The Secret Diary of a Car Dealer….Part 3

Had an interesting conversation about cleaning cars this week. Stay with me…..it went something like this….

Brought a new car in, ‘minted it up’ and as I’m taking a few photos a young dealer asked me who does my ‘detailing’.

Now I know I’m old school, but I tend to prep them myself… when I started washing cars in the ’70s a hose pipe was a luxury (and a jet wash was putting your thumb over the end of one) – if you were very lucky you had a kettle handy to ‘take the chill off’ the soapy water, wire wheels were tackled with a toothbrush & a tube of Autosol, paint corrected with a T-Cut and polish and for the height of sophistication the finishing touch was an air freshener.

All the stuff we use now makes our lives considerably easier: I’m a big fan of a clay bar, jet wash, snow foam, the endless range of products that I keep buying to improve the results. And, of course, there’s my very fancy machine polisher. Other than the fact I quite enjoy it, it’s a great way to give a new car a good going over.

Back in the ’80s I discovered the ‘valeter’ – lovely bloke who came round in a van and minted them up for me when I was pushed for time. Did a proper job, and I do mean a proper job – paintwork like new, interior immaculate, wheels like mirrors and an engine bay you could eat your lunch off; finished it all off with a nice air freshener, charged me sensible money and took no more than a day – job done.

Back to present day. The young chap proudly told me that he has all his cars ‘detailed’ before he advertises them, at which point I confessed that I’m not entirely clear what a ‘detailer’ is, or why I might need one, or even how they differ from the good old fashioned valeter?  I do use a specialist valeter when I have a car that requires complicated paint correction or the customer has requested a ceramic coat or PPF, but a full ‘detail’ seemed overkill on EVERY car, so I asked him about it.

Apparently, for an eye-watering amount of money his detailer spends two or three days cleaning a car; so I assumed he only bought cars that required complicated paint correction. Nope! Everything gets a fancy ceramic coating? Nope! The air freshener is diamond-encrusted? – also nope.

None the wiser I decided to investigate and called my specialist asking him to explain. Two large coffees and a bacon butty later and I think I’ve got it: It’s because the Americans started to called ‘valeting’, ‘detailing’.