Pollen is the only reason I will hose off the vehicles at this stage of my life…
I owned one black car in my life and that was enough of that. Talk about being a slave to your car. Strangely enough, white cars seem to be the opposite of black…in terms of showing dirt too!
A lot depends on whether or not it is garaged. I get my vehicle washed once every 5-6 weeks, and–except for the Spring pollen season and right after road salt is put down–it looks quite clean because it’s garaged most of the time.
My car suffers from the yellow pollen stuff too. I don’t have a garage, sadly; the car becomes filthy with it within a week after a wash. This contributes to the reason I wash twice a month.
Car wash stations are brutal though. I’m seeing some crazy rashes on the wheels from the car wash conveyor and in between the side mirrors.
Well, there’s always hand washing. I tend to do that, especially with the Prius as I’m paranoid about the air-cooling vent for the hybrid battery. It should be fine in an auto wash, but I’ve never wanted to take the chance. I really don’t need water getting all up in those works.
Looks like at least one of the places you use needs to do better cleaning and maintenance of the equipment…
There’s a NAPA AP store near me that mixes custom spray cans to your pain code. It came in handy when a deer took out a passenger’s side mirror and I replaced it with a used one from a car with a different color.
The best car color I ever had for extended wash intervals () was silver metal flake. I’m not a big fan of silver but that car never looked like it needed washing. Good thing, it was a Grand Marquis and so had a lot of surface area… Must have been around 18 years old when I sold it (practically gave it away) and it spent the majority of that time outside. Hadn’t been washed let alone waxed in 13 years. Looked fantastic, almost like new. Shame to get rid of it but had to cull the herd…
The owners manual for our 61 (yeah I read the manual even at 13) said with the new paint you never had to wax it. Either acrylic lacquer or enamel, don’t remember which. I waxed it anyway. Can’t believe everything you read. Sea foam green I think.
5 minutes hosing the dust off the car’s finish accomplishes a lot toward preserving the car’s long term appearance. Vacuuming the accumulated debris that gets in the area below the windshield on every oil change will do a lot to prevent the drains from clogging.