What is Car Detailing? Much more than just polishing!



Maniacal care of details and great professionalism at the base of a new technique that allows you to eliminate even the smallest imperfections from the bodywork

Have you bought a nice used car, perhaps a high-end model or a vintage GT, but its bodywork is a bit neglected? Or, more simply, is it not the right time to replace a car that inevitably shows the signs of the passing of time? A jump to the body shop for a "refresh" is almost obligatory.

Until recently we would all have thought of a nice polish . Today, however, the most appropriate answer is the one that the experts called "car detailing" or a set of treatments and processes whose purpose, as the translation of the term says, is "to take care of your car down to the smallest detail" , intervening on defects and imperfections even immediately imperceptible.
They range from the removal of acid stains or limestone up to the signs of oxidation or sanding, from the correction of even the most imperceptible scratches ("swirl "Or circular lines," rid "or deep straight lines, holograms that is extra-fine lines that opacify the bodywork, etc.) to cleaning, protection and sanitizing treatments for exteriors and interiors, from decontamination and protection of glass to care for plastics up to cleaning and protection treatments for wheels and engine compartment. In short, a painstaking, almost maniacal work, bordering on art that has only aesthetic purposes, but is also and perhaps above all aimed at restoring and maintaining the medium.

Times and costs of auto detailing are obviously different from those of a normal polishing . For the former we speak of half a day in the case of basic treatments up to several days for the complete ones. The latter vary according to the type of intervention: from 30-65 Euros for simple cleaning and washing treatments of the interiors or exteriors up to over 1,000 Euros, depending on the type of car, for complete treatments with the use of last generation. A basic "car detailing" treatment (cleaning and decontamination of the bodywork and a simple polishing) costs about 300 Euros to which the costs of the protective product must be added, while for an average treatment (cleaning and decontamination of the bodywork, masking of plastics and gaskets, control of defects and paint thickness, correction of defects, polishing, treatments on internal and external plastics, protective treatments of leather seats, engine cleaning) are spent on average 750 Euros, always net of cost protection. But the result is truly spectacular!

by PAOLO FERRINI for repubblica.it