You don’t need to wax your car every week – but a couple times each year won’t hurt

An old friend used to wash and wax his car every weekend when the weather was reasonably warm. He used a two-step Blue Coral brand of wax that essentially required waxing the car twice – a pre-wax and the actual wax. Today, Blue Coral even offers a combination wash and wax but not then.

Most of my friend’s Saturdays were filled with washing and waxing his car – a red 1973 Plymouth Duster. I don’t think he had any idea how much time he was wasting.

A 2008 Car Care Council booklet titled, “Car Care Guide: Maintaining Your Vehicle for Safety, Dependability and Value” has a section on “Appearance.” According to the booklet’s description of “Typical Service,” washing once a week is frequent. Waxing “once every 6 months” is also considered frequent.

The point is that the wax helps to protect the finish of your car; it extends the life of the body of the car barring any accidents.

As the booklet explains, “Keeping your vehicle consistently clean prevents the buildup of damaging chemicals and dirt that may attack your car’s finish … frequent washing can reduce the corrosive effects of salt that cause body rust-through.”

In other words, keeping your car clean has more than a purely aesthetic purpose. That still doesn’t explain my friend’s decision to wax his car every relatively warm weekend. The only explanation for his rabid attention to the appearance of his car was the immense sense of pride he took in the car. For instance, he used to park the car as far away from the doors of shopping malls so that other cars wouldn’t park next to him. In this way, he hoped they wouldn’t bang their doors against his car’s pristine finish.

The booklet also makes a point about using the proper kind of soap when washing a car. Your best bet is to use a soap designed for washing cars. A common mistake is to use dish soap. Bad idea: the dish soap strips away the wax. In other words, if you use dish soap each week, you’ll have a good excuse for waxing the car, too.

In the winter, it’s probably a good idea to run the car through a car wash from time to time. But, as Denny Norton of Ringwood based Performance Unlimited put it, even here, you have choices.

There are different styles of car washes – some with hanging towels that run over the car, others with large brush wheels that roll front to back and back again. The best, however, is the touchless car wash. The others can leave scratches and marks on the car’s finish.

With a touchless car wash, the only things that touch the car are soap, pressurized water, spot-free rinse and, if it’s time and you pay extra, wax.

As for my friend, he’s older and a little wiser now. At least, that’s what I tell him mornings when I see him in the mirror.

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