For many car owners, their vehicle is among their most valued and treasured possessions. Unless you are a homeowner, your car may be the most valuable item that you own.
We often choose cars that reflect something of our personality, or at least something of our personality that we want to reveal about ourselves to others. The car that we drive – its colour, make, model, engine size, engine type – is an important choice that we make. With commuting and trips to see families, shopping etc., we can spend a great deal of time in our cars, so how they look is very important to us, and people may judge us by how our car looks.
Looking After Your Car
The value and importance of our motor vehicles means that they often require a great deal of personal care. There are a number of reasons for this.
Firstly, we want to make sure our car is safe to drive on the roads, so we will often spend a great deal of time and money in maintaining our car to the highest mechanical standards. Car dealerships and automotive garages can really help with this part of car maintenance and repair, as no one wants to be stuck in the middle of nowhere with a broken down car. Mobile car detailing could be the solution.
What is Mobile Car Detailing
However, something that car owners can neglect, is looking after the appearance of their car. Some owners will take great care and delight in looking after how their car looks, and how their car operates, whereas many owners will struggle to find the time to give the car the love and care that it needs.
Some owners will also have large garages where cars can be stored when not being used, and that will protect the vehicle from the rigours of the environment, such as dust, dirt and pollution. Many owners will not have such a luxury and roadside parking will take its toll on the cleanliness of a car over time.
Just driving a car will impact on its appearance, as the pollution produced by other cars on the road, and the general dirt and dust in the air will ruin that just-out-of-the-showroom look that is so attractive on cars.
It is not just about appearance, leaving dirt and dust on the body of your vehicle for any extensive period of time can damage the body work, so looking after it is vital, to retain both the value of the car, and its appearance.
This is where car detailing will come in. Some people will have the time, resources and facilities to keep their car in tip top shape, whereas many people won’t have the time or resources to keep their car as clean as it should be.
Cars can quite often be taken to a specialist car wash or detailing business in order to clean the car, but for convenience, mobile car detailing is perhaps the best option out there, letting professionals get to work on your car at your own home or workplace, with the skills, products and experience, to make your car look as pristine as possible.
Car detailing involves cleaning both the inside of the car, focusing on the following areas:
- Outside – bodywork and paint work, chrome, bumpers, windows, window wipers, handles, underside, tires etc.
- Inside – dashboards, footwells, floor mats, seating, handles
Mobile car detailing involves a number of different processes. On the outside of the car it often involves a shampoo and a wash for the main body of the car, whilst using cloths and waxing products to polish the main bodywork, any special trim (such as chrome) as well as cleaning the windows throughout the vehicle. This may also involve special products which clean the tyres and restore them to their original black colour, as tyres often become grayer over time.
Professional cleaning products and experience often means that mobile car detailers can do a better job than we can ourselves.
On the inside of the car, a mobile car detailer will polish the inside of the car, particularly any plastics or metals, removing dirt and dust. Vacuuming is also an important part of the process, removing dust and dirt from the floor mats, footwells and seats, restoring the car to a factory-like condition.
As you can imagine, detailing a car can be a time-consuming operation, and depending on the size and cleanliness of your car, it could easily take a couple of hours to fully detail a vehicle.
Although we can often do the job ourselves, it may be a better use of our time to allow a professional mobile car detailing service to the job for us. The fact that it is mobile means that the car detailers come to you, at a time of your own convenience, rather than you having to drive your car to a distant car detailing service and the risk of it getting dirty again on the way home.
As well as cleaning the inside and outside of the car, car detailing may also involve minor repair work, for example small scratches on the exterior or interior of the vehicle, that any competent detailer will be able to deal with.
Finding a Mobile Car Detailer
One of the best ways of finding a mobile car detailer is through recommendation. Have your family and friends used one locally that they recommend? Does the dealership that you bought the vehicle from have a business that they work with for detailing that they themselves recommend?
Failing personal recommendations, there are many mobile car detailers that will perform that task for you, that you can discover on the Internet or through a local directory.
Mobile car detailers will be able to discuss with you your options, the different packages that they have available, the products they use and how they operate, helping you to make an informed choice.
Mobile car detailing is a very time efficient and pragmatic way of having your car professionally detailed and cleaned, letting you focus on using your own time and resources more efficiently.