This is sort of on topic, because washing the car ought to be a do-it-yourself job, but I dislike doing it especially in very cold weather like now. So, especially in winter, I used to take the car to a nearby automatic car wash, the sort with big fluffy rollers which rotated while detergent solution was squirted out, and this did a perfectly good job in a couple of minutes for maybe £2-50 or £3. But they all seem to have vanished around us, and all you can find are "attended" washes where some unfortunate youngster squirts a hose at your car for a few seconds and then charges you a fiver. If they do a good job it takes a lot longer, and if they don't do a good job I resent paying more than for having something done that could be done better and more quickly by machine, indeed a machine that I know used to be installed all over the place. Is there some health and safety issue that has passed me by, or do some fully automatic car washes still exist, if you search hard enough?

we have one in the village and one at Sainbury's filling station 6 miles away. But one nearer than that has closed; forecourt rebuilt and the space is now a Little Waitrose. Presumably more money in it.

Where have all the automatic car washes gone?

Nov 23, 2015 42 Replies

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damduck-egg 10 years ago

Use a similar wand on the hose ,fortunately our water pressure is fairly high so no need to get a p/washer out. Also there are a number of fords around here with nice fresh water flowing so after salt spreading has finished a trip or two through one will get the worst off until a more thorough job can be done. This one we use regularly is good because it is Irish bridge style and has no gravel or slimey stones to worry about.

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G.Harman

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Alan Braggins 10 years ago

Same here. There are still a couple of automatic car washes locally, but the cheapest wash settings don't include the underbody wash, and even the one with a guy with a pressure washer doing a pre-wash in the queue I wouldn't expect to get all the mud off the underside when the car has been off road.

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Harry Bloomfield 10 years ago

Dave Plowman (News) laid this down on his screen :

I have the equipment to hand, because I have other vehicles to wash occasionally - I save time driving to the wash and of course the fuel.

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