My car is usually pretty dirty, TBH. I do have a two-car garage, just barely, but one half of it is devoted to way too many bicycles and my repair area for them, plus storage for whatever doesn’t have a place to go in the house. Oh, how I long for the days when I had a basement …
Anyway, my wife’s 2024 Lexus NX 250 gets the garage spot as the newer, nicer car, and also because it’s her car, which is more important than newer and nicer – but in this case, it’s all three. So my 2015 RAV4 – her previous car – lives outside, and is thus usually dirty. But here’s the thing: it’s silver, so it has to get really filthy before I notice enough to care. And even then, a quick window-wash while I fill the tank does a pretty good job of restoring the illusion of cleanliness.
I do have a breaking point, of course. It’s usually about the wheels though, not the car. When the tires are looking brown and the front wheels are dark with brake dust, that’s when I bust out the suds. Sometimes it’s a DIY job in the driveway, other times I do the exterior-wash-only at my local car wash joint.
As for the inside of my car, I can stand littering in there for a day or two, as in stuffing a Snickers wrapper into the door pocket or not fretting over a straw sleeve that flutters to the floor, but I can’t deal with actual filth. A sticky cup holder must be dealt with immediately. Crumbs in the emergency brake boot gotta go. I’m also a bit dust crazy, I can’t stand it when the top of the dash and the no man’s land between the steering wheel and dash look less than freshly wiped.
How about you: How dirty is your car, whether it’s usually, or right now?
Top graphic image: DepositPhotos.com
“I do have a two-car garage, just barely, but one half of it is devoted to way too many bicycles and my repair area for them”
Same situation but I hang my way too many (10+ bike trailer) bicycles from the ceiling of the garage and I just move a car when I need a repair area. Or I use the kitchen if the garage is too hot/cold.
“plus storage for whatever doesn’t have a place to go in the house. Oh, how I long for the days when I had a basement …”
Can you not throw at least some stuff up in the attic? I’ve got my 6 parts bikes up there. Or on shelving around the cars? That’s where I keep by Brooks and Ideale saddle collection.
(I may have a hoarding issue…)
10 bikes?! and here I thought 4 motorcycles in a one car garage was a lot.
I’ve somehow managed to get 2 cars and 3 motorcycles in a 2 car garage… All of which can get out without finagling. That was an accomplishment.
That is impressive! I certainly wish for more space, but it keeps me in check. For now.
Your two-car garage must be a lot wider than the two-car garages I’ve owned. I, at one point, owned two motorcycles and they took up enough space that my car had to stay outside. They were pretty big bikes though. A Suzuki Vstrom 1000 and a Honda Gold Wing.
It’s admittedly long and I have short/small cars. The “long” car is only 13.5 ft long. I’m able to sneak the motorcycles between the cars and spread them out in front of the cars so everything can get out. Years of Tetris have really paid off.
I recounted. 11 more or less roadworthy and 5 in various states of disassembly. That includes a coupe of frames. All but one predate the first Clinton administration.
You may be less impressed to know most of them were free (some I found on trash piles!) and the rest were purchased for anywhere between $20-120. These are bikes ignored by all but retrogrouches:
https://hoomau.co/explore/enduropedia/retrogrouch/
But the problems, if any, are mostly scratched/worn paint, surface rust, dirt and 40+ years of time.
I dig it. I hope you live in a bike friendly place where these get a lot of usage! My vehicular passion all started on bikes. Along with my gas powered rigs, I have an electric single speed that I love (just a lil bit more than $120). I would certainly have more bikes if I lived in a more bike friendly area.
Thanks. My area is fairly bike friendly and heading in the right direction. Your ebike sounds intriguing. I am on the fence about getting one. I like the greater flexibility they offer, especially for cargo but my main reason for biking is the exercise and I think if I were to ride one of those I’d get even lazier. Plus as I said my bike storage is overhead and that’s not an option with an ebike.
The cargo e-bikes and whatnot are next level. I was blown away by some of the big e-bikes in amsterdam. Seemed like they could move anything with em.
That would be my choice.
I have only owned one bicycle at a time. I bought a used Dawes Galaxy while I was in college. On my last day on campus, I locked it to a wooden railing. When I returned to it that evening, some miscreant had cut the railing and the bike was gone. It was a great bike and I miss it to this day.
I would ride it from my apartment in Del Mar up to UCSD through the Torrey Pines State National Preserve. It was an elevation gain of about 400 feet and the semi-switchback path through the preserve made for easier pedaling. Heading back home, I’d take North Torrey Pines Road, past the golf courses and then coast downhill and terrifying speeds. Without a helmet. I was so stupid and lucky.
Ah I know that lovely road. Unfortunately that was before I got into cycling so I never rode it.
I see Dawes Galaxies pop up once in a while so if you want to scratch that nostalgia bug you might get lucky. While I’m currently into early, fully lugged steel all terrain bikes I have a number of touring bikes too. My favorite there is my Shogun Alpine GT. I find however as I age all terrain bikes are more comfortable.
Is Cheap Bastard actually Raph from the light factory?! (didn’t Raph do a story about an all terrain bike near the beginning of the pandemic?)
All three cars are spotless all the time.
Dusted daily if used. All garage kept.
If used during the week then Sat morning it’s fully cleaned.
I rarely wash with water, usually use a spray cleaner product and micro fiber towels. Only wash with water if it’s really dirty after driving in the rain. No snow here.
They are all professionally detailed each year.
I like doing it and it’s relaxing for me. I even look forward to cleaning them. My job is so vauge so much of the time that car cleaning is satisfying.
I’ve been this way since I got my first car 44 years ago. When I was poor and young and drove crap cans they were still clean as a whistle.
Come visit and do mine next 🙂
Same. Even before I had a car I would spend weekends detailing my parents cars. Back then it was carnauba wax or glaze, but one of the first things I did to our current cars was a full paint correction and ceramic coating. It’s therapeutic.
I try and keep it clean, but it certainly gets dirty.
I drive 1000 miles per week, mostly through empty farmland with lots and lots of bugs. I usually run through the gas station touchless every week or two. I keep the interior similarly clean. All trash/belongings go inside the house when I get home. The car is basically my office and I don’t like working in a dirty workspace.
Both cars are filthy clean. They were washed, ceramic coated and parked last Sep/Oct, and I haven’t needed to use them since. I really need to drain my mostly full tanks and give the gas away…
Depends which one haha. The FJ and Truck don’t really get washed often as they sit in the barn not covered and there are cats so they just get dust and paw prints all over them both interiors are decently clean truck more so then FJ. Both the Firebirds interiors are really clean but they need to be washed from all the barn dust (they do sit under a ton of covers to prevent scratches from the cats though). The Polestar 2 I try to wash the outside monthly or bi-monthly since it is the daily and the interior (pretty much the drivers seat) I vacuum every so often.
My car may be dirty on the outside since it, too, lives outside. I’ll give the exterior a wash every few weeks, changing up the schedule if I get dive bombed by a seagull. But I keep the interior very clean.
Conversely, my wife’s car is disgusting on the interior. Like I don’t recall her cars being like this when we dated, because if we did, it might’ve been a bar to marriage. Now, her car was usually a kid hauler and all children are basically Pigpen, but now our spawn are old enough to clean up after themselves.
Interior doesn’t get horribly dirty but any car under the carport gets a healthy layer of dust. Maybe it’s nature’s UV protection 😛
My cars all get an exterior wash about once a month, or whenever they look especially dirty and the weather looks decent for the next week. Not much point in washing the car if it’s going to rain the next day.
The interiors I keep extremely clean, in part because I’m a neat freak that way, and also because I used to take lots of customers to lunches and didn’t want my car looking like pig sty. I regularly vacuum the seats and floors and dust the dashboard and trim. I’ll use upholstery cleaners a few times a year throughout the car just to keep everything looking neat.
I do have kids, but I’ve set good habits that helps keep the car reasonably clean to the point where a quick wipe-down is enough to go from “kid mode” to “customer mode”.
I have a carwash membership so the Mercedes gets washed at least once a month.
But because I have left the roof down so much over the years, the cream seatbelts are utterly filthy, and nearly impossible to clean – and the wheels are difficult to keep clean even with frequent washing.
Not my car, but there is a Jag in the garage on Dalton St in Boston. I forget exactly the last valid date on the car’s plate, but its at least 15 years. 2nd or 3rd level. Its surprisingly cleaner than you would think, but pretty crusty
When I lived in San Francisco, there was a big late-60s Lincoln Continental sedan stashed away in our parking garage that never moved once in the 20 years I lived in the building – and it looked like it could have been sitting there for the 20 years preceeding my move in.
In Chinatown, there was a 56 Chevy in there in the big garage, haven’t been there in 15 years, but that thing could have been there 20 in 1995
I do not want to clean the Unimog, I suspect that the crud is now structural. The Bentley gets an annual clean whether it needs it or not.
F’n filthy.
My silver Forester hasn’t been cleaned or vacuumed in years. I’m considering it at the moment because it stinks of dog. I’m good with removing trash, but miscellaneous stuff builds up (tools, shoes, ect.). If I want to sell it, I’ll clean it. If not, most of its value to me is that it’s mostly reliable and I honestly don’t care about its condition.
Miata – a disaster. I only drive it with the top down. I park it with the top down. Dogs allowed and they have done a number on the leather seats. I just took it out for the first time since winter and it’s full of leaves from last fall. I like to pretend I’m Hank Moody without the underage girl troubles when I drive it.
Outback has become a shed within a garage. Haven’t driven it over a year. Probably should have traded it in, but I know when it goes I am unlikely to ever have another brown manual wagon. Also, it’s nice to have a spare around when I decide to just t-bone someone that cuts me off. I also always know where my impact gun and sockets are (in the Outback).
Ioniq 5 stays clean.
Oh! The MGB is spotless. It’s in the garage and I dust it off regularly. Perfectly clean. Except for that greasy smudge on the drivers door where I bumped into it while trying to get my bicycle out whilst sweaty and greased up with sunblock
As an urban autopian, my daily and weekend car live in a parking garage. So on one hand, they’re spared from life in the elements but on the other, they get covered by a surprising amount of fine dust and dirt with no passive methods to get rid of it.
The best is like this past weekend when driving the Mustang, a fortuitous short lived rainstorm blasted it all off, followed by the wind tunnel of highway driving. Nice and clean again.
My Miata is outdoors for the season, so it’s pretty dirty. Lots of dust and the occasional bird plop on it. I should probably wash it this weekend. The inside is okay, dusty because I drive with the top down most days, but no trash to speak of. There are sunblock smudges here and there. I’m usually greased up if I’m in there for more than about fifteen minutes in the sun.
ask me again in February.
Not at all. 🙂 She is garage-kept and washed pretty regularly.
I recently picked up some of that flubber stuff that car detailers use to get dust out of vents, etc. It works really well.
Can you clean/restore it, or does it eventually become this furry goo out of some 80s scifi movie?
No and no, as far as I understand. It will eventually become dirty and will need to be replaced, but if it becomes sci-fi material you may need to reconsider your detailing technique. 🙂
Whatever you do, don’t store it in a 90+ degree garage. It goes from “Hey, this stuff’s great” to “Hey Google, how do I get this stuff off my hands?”.
Good advice 🙂 I do store it in the air-conditioned house but can see how it might not work well in higher temperatures.
Idle curiosity: what did google tell you?
That was a bit of a joke, actually. I just wiped it off and GoJo took care of the nasty greasy residue it left. Fortunately I didn’t have to figure out how to get it out of the vents!
Gotcha 🙂 GoJo is good stuff
I can stand it between rain storms. And we get some doozies here. I keep the interior cabin around the front seats clean the area behind it is hole that gets done when I need to make room.
Nope: washed at least bi-weekly, waxed quarterly. It’s my first new car, actually any car, after 35 years in NYC, and I baby it. I love to see it bright red and shiny.
I got back from an MTB holiday in the forest to find we have a hose pipe ban at home, due to water shortages/lack of investment in infrastructure.
So my GT86 is mostly the colour of fly guts.
My Europa looks horribly dusty, but always does, even when clean, because it’s black.
Put a bucket in the shower and use the water when full. You don’t even need soap. Do it in the rain and you get a good rinse to.
My dad used to tell me this is how he’d do his Nova street parked in NYC in the 70’s. He’d just go out there while it was raining.
Rinseless wash is your friend. Premix a couple of ounces with 4 gallons of distilled water and store in a 5-gallon bucket with a screw-on lid and a good grit guard. You can get 4-6 washes out of that and no need to use a hose at all.
The downside of our charming Craftsman style home on a street with mature overhanging trees is that there is no garage and the trees drop layers of pollen and foul-smelling little flowers for half the summer. Between that and the wind-deposited dust and rain spatter of our dry Western state, the three cars take far too much effort to keep clean.
Two of them are looking pretty good right now. The other not so much.
I have more control over the interiors and keep them much tidier. If I have to choose between a filthy exterior with immaculate interior or vice versa, I’m going with the immaculate interior.
We have 6 vehicles in our fleet. The vintage El Camino and MGB are clean and under car covers in the garage. The newest one, our 2024 Trax, is also clean, under a car cover, and under a carport. Our winter vehicle, which hasn’t been driven since April, is under a tarp and under a carport.
Our daily drivers are both pretty dirty. My regular-cab, 5-speed, 2WD pickup has a bunch of dead bugs on the grille and the hood since we took it to a couple of concerts and drove home in the dark. The wife’s Cruze was clean, but hasn’t been driven much in the last three weeks so it has a lot of dust on pollen on it and could use a wash as well.
My two Acura’s are PPF’d with XPEL on the front third of the car and they are garaged. I have TuxMats in as well. This makes maintaining the vehicles really easy. The wife and daughter are pretty good about doing cleanup on them as well. So they remain pretty spotless.
The Mazda 3 is outside all the time and probably only gets washed twice monthly. I put Armor Detail Supply’s ceramic coating on it last year and it’s still keeping it pretty clean when it just rains.
The real wash therapy is cleaning the boat.
No way man, my car is kept showroom clean. I am pretty crazy about keeping that bright red shine.
Ditto: see my post upthread.
Triple ditto.
I mean, what’s the point of it’s dirty?
Club Red here too. It’s crazy how much more you notice dirt on a red car.
My new-to-me pickup is probably the cleanest car I’ve ever had because the seller lovingly washed it before the sale. I doubt I’ll keep to that standard but it’s kinda nice.