Cleaning Cars Is Almost as Enjoyable as Driving Them

How do you like to take in the flowing form of a Ferrari Dino or the wedge-tastic lines of a Lotus Esprit? 

Do you hold your distance and try and see the car as a whole, appreciating its completeness as its designer intended? Maybe you prefer to get up close and personal with the little finishing details? Or is the best way to cast an artistic eye over any car simply to see it motion, passing by in its natural habitat?

Obviously, I know the answer: You’re a petrolhead, so you do all this and more. 

But from the moment I owned my first car, a £600 Ford Anglia 105E that I paid for with the sale of my knackered race kart, taking in the form of a car was always best done with a bucket and sponge. 

The first steady job I managed to hold down as a car-mad 13-year old was washing cars at Kentish Saab. As the name suggests, this was a Saab dealer—remember them?—in Borough Green, near Sevenoaks, southeast of London in Kent. A small, independent dealership, it had a special feeling about it, where everyone seemed to be on first-name terms, in part because the Butler family that owned the business were such a personable bunch.

Every Saturday it was my job to fill up the buckets with warm soapy water, bring out the jet wash, soak the chamois leathers, attach the mangle to the wall, and then set to washing Saabs of all persuasions all day long.

From old 99s to hot 900 Turbos to new-fangled 9000s (Type Four project, anyone?) I’d diligently work my way through the backlog, sometimes getting a word of thanks from the owner, sometimes getting a ‘hurry it up’ from the sales director as he waited to appraise a potential part-exchange. 

I came to appreciate the quirks and foibles of the models from Sweden’s other car company. Wraparound windscreens; clamshell bonnets; plastic side skirts; girder-like bumpers; the quirky is-it-or-isn’t-it-a-hatchback design; turbo badging. As you wiped away the dirt you came to better appreciate not only the car’s design language but the company’s values. 

It’s something that stayed with me. From washing my own Anglia to cleaning thousands of test cars during decades as a motoring writer—a memory that sends a shiver down my spine, as it usually involved kitchen roll and glass spray, because you were in the middle of nowhere—running your hands over the bodywork was always a good way to see how form and function intersect. Sometimes they’d complement one another beautifully; other times it was a violent, head-on collision. 

Since taking a stab at entrepreneurship and launching a new car-storage venture, I find myself returning to those days of washing Saabs. Not because a teardrop 92 or turbocharged 99 has been brought in to be cared for but because the jet wash, snow foam gun, buckets (three, since you’re asking), wash mitts, blower dryer, and drying towels are being put to work on a daily basis.

And when you have run that soapy mitten around the edges of the honeycomb-like engine cover of a Porsche Carrera GT, worked a drying towel over the rear wing of an F40—noticing how the ‘F40’ icon is only stamped into the right side wing support—or blown water away from the myriad strakes down the flanks of a late Countach, you are immersing yourself in the thinking of the designers and engineers who created these machines.

The Carrera GT has a Swiss watch vibe about it, all exacting precision and expensive componentry that is exquisitely presented. Just drying the wheels is a story in itself. The magnesium center-locking nuts are coloured ruby on the driver’s side (left) wheels and topaz for the offside. Why? Their trapezoidal thread was designed to run against the direction of travel for security. So a nut on the left couldn’t be used on the right—and any attempts by technicians to mix them up during a service would have resulted in an insurance-claim-level repair bill.

The Ferrari F40 looks and, in places, feels as though it was thrown together from boxes of bits. And in a way, it was. The car was the result of the most accelerated development program in Ferrari’s history, fueled no doubt by the strongest Italian espresso. It took just 13 months to bring Enzo Ferrari’s vision for ‘a true Ferrari’ to fruition. So the F40 has to be about function, but when that function involved creating a supercar that would be stable at 200mph, the shape and detailing were always going to scream drama.

Then there’s the Countach. What began as a bold, daring piece of modernist work that showcased the visionary talent of its designer, Marcello Gandini, would later morph into a car that was placed on life support. Chrysler-owned Lamborghini had been forced to extend the sell-by date of the Countach, so a third redesign—by Horatio Pagani—was required, resulting in the 25^th Anniversary model that I recently found myself washing. In adding layers of complexity—skirts, spoilers, wheel arch extensions—the Countach lost its alien, otherworldliness that had caused such shock in 1973.

This appreciation for form and function doesn’t only happen when cleaning supercars. Wash a Mercedes E320 cabriolet and you literally feel the quality that went into those W124-era Benzes. A BMW i3 is a fascinating experiment in the future direction for the brand. A humble Fiat Pandareminds you of its ingenious simplicity and cost-effectiveness. The surfacing of an original Ford Focus speaks of a company determined to make better products.

Washing a car is probably one of those things they never think to ask in a consumer survey, but they should. Probably, in your lifetime, the simple act of cleaning a car has brought nearly as much pleasure and interest as driving it.