voip-ninja
Give me some sugar baby
I have to so totally disagree with this statement. I've used automatic car washes for probably over 30 years. And I'd place my cars up against most any other car. Matter of fact, I just about always get a "your car is how old?" response.
Keeping the car cleaned and washed and stored in a garage is by far the best way to take care of it. Heck, just leaving it sitting outside is going to cause so much damage in very few years.
Well we can agree to disagree, but I will agree with you that garaging a car is overall the best way to keep it looking good.
Car washes use pretty harsh soaps and very low grade sealers. Touchless ones don't do a horrible job but any of them that touch your car ARE scratching it, and it's pretty obvious if you look at the finish in bright sunlight.
If you're happy with what you're getting out of it more power to you.
I wash mine with a pressure washer and a foam lance, two water buckets, microfiber wash mitts and some microfiber towels for drying. It sounds like a lot of stuff but I can typically do a car in about 25-30 minutes and it will look better than anything an automatic car wash is going to do.
If I was in a job/profession where I needed my car to look perfect every day and the car looking presentable was more important than the car looking new then sure I'd blow $500-$800 on an unlimited wash service at one of the better ones around and just wash it every few days, but I don't have time for that crap.
Between them running it through, vacuuming it, drying it off, doing the wheels, it takes 20-30 minutes at all of the ones I've been to. If I'm going to waste that much time I just do it myself, and I don't even have to leave a tip.