Wash your car? That'll be £ 5,000 please!

Paul Dalton, the owner of the first "beauty shop" for cars says that he is the best car washer in the world. In spite of the fact that the cost of the wash, drying and the polishing of the car in his own-man company Miracle Detail costs £ 5,000 (about 7,060 Euro) there is no lack of customers.

The fame of Dalton has reached such a height that during the last months he started to drive out of Great Britain to realize the orders in other European countries and has already got an order from Russia.

Dalton started out with a sponge and a bucket at the age of 13. Now, 17 years later he is international car washer to the stars, the man the rich and famous turn to whenever their motors start looking. Rod Stewart uses Dalton's services for his $ 900,000 Ferrari Enzo.

So what do you get for all that cash? The whole process consists of 52 stages and takes about 64 hours. At first - degreasing and lubricant removing with four washes using four different buckets and four different sponges, rinsed each time with filtered water at exactly 30°C.

After being rinsed and dried with a micro-fibre towel from Australia, the paint is being "decontaminated" using a clay bar. This takes off tar, grime and tree sap.

Next is the depth gauge, an electronic probe that measures paint thickness to the nearest micron. So that Dalton knows how far he can go smoothing out scratches, using the rotary polisher and a micro-abrasive solution which structure Dalton keeps a secret.

After more washes and an inspection under strong light comes the extraordinary Zymöl wax that costs £ 7,000 a tube. It is made with 73% carnauba wax that is gathered from the Brazilian wax palmtree Copernica Cerifera leaves. A mere three tablespoons of Zymöl do the whole car. The world's hardest wax, it's applied by hand to warm and soften it, buffed and left to set. Then buffed again. In the meantime, the wheel rims are cleaned with a horsehair brush and gel, untill they become smooth and shiny.

The end result is astonishing - like looking into pure money. But what, really, is the point? Surely after a few showers the car is dirty again? No way! The rain just beads off. This will last a year. One wash and it'll be backlooking awesome.


by The Guardian.