Reading time: 4 minutes
We haven’t seen the results in full, but we do know that the automotive detailing industry was very near to, if not at the top of the list. As a result, we have seen millions of dollars injected into the industry, both in the USA and Europe, to buy established detailing brands. It has got to the point now where a couple of conglomerates may well account for nearly half of the brands on sale. So, the topic of today’s article is why has detailing become so popular that the industry is moving from bathtub brewers to multi-national mega corporations?
Historically, the length of time people kept their cars has always varied. Car ownership exploded in the 1950’s, while the late 1960’s saw the rise of multi-car ownership, but despite this consumerism, people tended to keep their cars for longer, usually 8-10 years. Notwithstanding the longer initial ownership, cars from this era usually succumbed to rust within a decade of manufacture, and even if preserved, it was generally considered that 100,000 miles was the typical ‘lifespan’ one could expect from the oily bits. Since then, the length of ownership has got smaller and smaller, despite cars generally being able to remain serviceable for longer and achieve more miles before the crusher strikes. However, in recent years, for various reasons – mostly economic – people are reverting to keeping their cars for longer. Naturally, as cars get older, they start to look a little tired, and this is where detailing can help – it is an automotive anti-aging panacea that’s getting popular – you’re protecting your investment in a way no stockbroker ever can.
Many owners have always liked to ‘tweak’ their cars – in the early days most ‘normal’ people needed a basic understanding of how a car functioned just to get to work in the morning. By the 1990’s cars had got to the point where they were generally reliable – you didn’t have to know how to clean your points or replace your plugs just to get to the shops – you had to do less. But if you wanted to keep tweaking, you often found yourself modifying and upgrading your car – something that became a craze in the late 90’s and early 00’s. In those days you could go to any town centre in the UK and find hoards of 20-40 year olds gathered around each other’s modified Mazdas or reved-up Renaults – it was nearly a cult. In the present day this has very much reduced – in most countries it has been made illegal to modify cars without getting each change approved, while in those countries where some freedoms remain, things like insurance hikes have made it far less appealing. So, if you don’t need to fix your car, and you’re not allowed to modify it, the only thing left is to clean it. And clean them they do, for hours and hours, using litres of products and all the machines and gizmos they can afford.
There are thousands of hobbies open to people nowadays, from golf to cross-stitch, there are endless ways to fill what little time we have on weekends or those couple of months between retirement and death. However, you will note that there are certain elements that correlate with the more popular hobbies. For example, brain surgery for beginners, amateur air traffic control, hobbyist Hebrew – none of these are particularly popular, mostly because they’re quite tricky to learn. Conversely, watching football, playing computer games, collecting baseball cards – none of these require intellectual engagement – some are in fact easier to do without brain cells, but they are all very popular. When given the choice, humans always go for the easiest option, and thirty years ago, detailing your car with the contemporary tools, chemicals, and online support was not completely easy. Granted, quantum physics was still marginally more difficult, but there were definitely easier ways to wind your weekends away. Now however, with tens of thousands of products, literally years’ worth of YouTube guides, and very user-friendly machine tools, it’s not difficult at all to detail your car to a reasonable standard. Unsurprisingly, one of the reasons detailing has grown, and is growing, is because it is now really easy.
Building on the last point that detailing has become easier and more accessible, there is a new take on detailing – it’s therapeutic value. With greater publicity about how stressful our lives have apparently become compared to our forebears, everyone is convinced they need to proactively seek ways to de-stress to avoid burnout and breakdown. Obviously in the olden days, the not-at-all-stressful occupations of mining, striking, and war-fighting could be countered with nothing more than drink and domestic violence, but modern man and woman need formal pastimes to survive. For some this might be spa weekends, deity worship, pottery sculpture, or golf – but many people have realised that detailing your own car at home is far better than any of that – there is even a brand called Garage Therapy. Three hours spent in your garage each week, with the kids locked out, their whinging muffled by Suzie Q at 101 decibels, and your phone set to silent, hasn’t been proved to add five years to your life, but in our completely biased opinion, it probably will have a similar effect as quitting smoking or giving up a gangster lifestyle.
The one place that detailing hasn’t taken off on quite such a scale is France, and this is quite telling, automotively speaking, the French appear to be one of the least vain of any European nation. For many in the UK, having a dirty car suggests you are not succeeding in life, that your neighbours are better than you, you’re a disappointment to your family. Worse still, in Russia and Bulgaria it is actually a crime to have a dirty car – failing to detail your car makes you a criminal, it’s probably a notch or two down from murder but you can still be fined. Though it goes against our raison d'être, we rather admire the Gallic shrug when it comes to a dirty car, it’s preferential to narcissistic obsession with keeping up appearances that has led to much of our economic uncertainty over the last decade or two. Nevertheless, the desire to look more successful than our neighbours, to flaunt our riches in the faces of others, has led to a lot of growth in the detailing industry, and for that we guess we ought to be thankful!
