The history of Automotive Detailing

You can't polish a car without a car... so we have to start with the invention of the car. Way back in Germany, 1886, Karl Benz, Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Mayback patented the first car. The DRP 37435 patent is the official birth of the car. A few years later, Gottlieb founded Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft, which became Mercedes Benz.

Let's skip ahead a bit to the Ford Model T, it was painted black for almost 20 years. This paint was based on the lacquer used on earlier horse carriages. By the 1930's an acrylic resin, or enamel was invented, along with an application method using an atomising spray gun. Soon thereafter, a hand made wax was developed in Zurich to protect antiques and lacquers.... well, the inventor soon found that it produced great results on the paint finish of automobiles as well. This wax, made by Anwander is still in use today by Mercedes and Rolls Royce. This wax was brought to America and the formula was changed for mass production and distributed by Turtle Wax Company until Zymol company was founded in 1980. Zymol is sold today. Another popular auto detailing supplier called Menzerna was already developing car care products by the 1950's and again, is still selling top quality products today.

In the 1950's a polisher was discovered by the automotive world, called the cyclo machine and was a huge success in paint restoration and correction. However, just before this, Meguiar's was already making foam pads for the rotary polishers, which are still in use today and are still the best tool for polishing cars. Meguiar's started out as a furniture finishing manufacturer in 1901 and is now on of the leader car care product manufacturers in the world. Also in the 1960's , Klasse ( Car-Lack ) was starting to use polyethylene instead of wax and as of today they produce one of the best car sealants in the business.

By the 1970's, Japan and Europe were using metallic based paints with a clear coat, this clear coat system produced outstanding hardness, gloss and long lasting color. This process migrated to the United States with some problems... many early 70's painted cars were having issues with clear coat failure within 2 or 3 years... it a quality issue.

The 1990's saw a surge in automotive care products and tools, including the random orbital rotary buffer. This machine, produced by Porter-Cable become one of the most used polishing tools in the market, and still is today. By this time, the painting systems had developed into the common 2 stage system with oven drying. This also was the time that a wider variety in paint color started to appear. This is mostly due to an increase in water based paints. This era also introduced us to Detailing Clay, one of my favorite products. This clay bar started in Japan and was used to remove all the contaminants from the paint surface, overspray, dirt, grime, tar, etc. It is also a key product for any professional automotive detailer today.

From 2000 to now has been incredible for the detailing business, many more products, tools and technology has gone into the industry. Micro fibre cloths became widely available and is the primary cloth used by all enthusiasts and professional detailers. Among the established manufacturers of car wax , polish and other various car care products, many new companies started developing and manufacturing their own products. By now, there are over 100 different wax products alone available throughout the world, however, the leaders were still Meguiar's, Menzerna, Klasse, etc. Paint clear coat technology was developing and products such as CeramiClear was made available and was the first to use nanoparticle technology. This product was very durable against day to day abuse, acid rain, UV radiation, etc. The same company also started to produce the coating technology that gave us the pearl, mica, light refracting pigments, color changing effects, aluminium flakes, etc.

The most recent developments include new automotive surface protection that are no wax sealants and fluorine-type clear coats. These new clear coat finishes have been put on luxury model cars, such as Infinity and must be treated differently then most other clear coat finishes. Typical polishing and waxing the newest cars may no longer produce the same results on these high-tech finishes. Consulting the automobile manufacturer is advisable.