Britain’s most expensive car wash takes a month and charges £7,200 to clean luxury motors
By Daily Mail Reporter 12:33 BST nineteen Jul 2010, updated Nineteen:37 BST nineteen Jul two thousand ten
When car valet Gurcharn Sahota began out washing motors, his equipment ran to little more than a bucket and sponge.
But the accountancy graduate has turned his love of quick cars into a thriving cleaning business with an eye-watering price list – charging up to a £7,200 for each bespoke valet.
Mr Sahota now counts a £5,000 police forensic microscope to detect minute scrapes, £8,200-a-tub paraffin wax and more than one hundred different cleaning fluids amongst the devices of his trade, after beginning the business in his parents’ garage.
Elite Detailing: Gurchan Sahota is Britain’s most expensive car wash, charging more than £7,000 and taking up to a month to clean luxury sports cars in his parents garage
The 30-year-old has lined the walls and floor of the dual unit with specialist tiles imported from Italy which help reflect flecks of mud on the cars.
Each vehicle takes up to two hundred fifty hours to clean, and his premier service includes grinding and buffing every inch of the car inwards and out FIVE times.
Since launching his business, ‘Elite Detailing’, five years ago, Mr Sahota said he had washed hundreds of supercars such as Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Rolls Royces and even the Le Mans-winning McLaren F1 GTR, of which only five of the twenty eight ever built were converted for road use.
He said that clients including rock starlets, Premiership footballers, lawyers and actors have continued to flock to him despite the recession because the cost of his service is ‘peanuts’ compared to the value of their cars.
Painstaking process: Gurchan Sahota uses a microscope to find scarcely visable marks in the paintwork of the cars, as well as specialist buffing paraffin wax which costs more than £8,000 a bath
‘People come to me and they want the best treatment going for their car’, Mr Sahota, who is single, said yesterday. ‘If you’ve got a £500,000 car then a few grand for cleaning is worth it.’
He starts every clean in the same way – washing it with a lambswool gauntlet and water mixed with Ph neutral shampoo and applied by a jet wash reaching temperatures of up to 120C (248F), depending on the bod panel.
The wheels are then steam cleaned at 150C (302F) with a machine purchased from the NHS and designed to kill the MRSA superbug, before the car is dried with a microfibre towel and an industrial blower.
A clay bar is then kneaded over the bodywork to pick up any remaining decontaminants like tree sap or atmospheric pollutants, before the car is then rinsed, dried again, and any scrapes are examined under the microscope.
Standard valets, which begin at around £700 depending on the car, involve a two-stage grinding process to liquidate any scrapes and then ‘sharpen up’ the paintwork.
Watching crimson: Gurcharn painstakingly cleans cars like the beautiful Ferrari Enzo
But the £7,200 service involves sanding the car down twice to make sure the paint is exactly the same thickness all over the car, then grinding it by machine in three stages. This not only brings the car’s colour back to life but also leaves each assets panel suggesting a ideal reflection.
Three glazes of the highly-concentrated carnauba paraffin wax, which is imported from Brazil, are then applied to seal the paint, compared with one cover on the standard valet, while plastics are also treated in a special sealant at a cost of £50 per 15mililitres.
Mr Sahota said clients who opt for the premier valet tend to be those who display their cars like ornaments, rather than drive them. Each car will only need one such treatment in its lifetime.
Winning formula: The McLaren F1 GTR is his favourite car to have come through the doors of his parents’ garage
Gurcharn’s car washing tips
Use warm soapy water.
Add warm water mixed with a PH neutral shampoo in one and plain water in the other.
Use a lambswool wash mitt which only costs £8 and is better than a sponge.
Always wash from the top down.
Use different cloths on the bodywork and wheels.
Avoid acidic and high-alkaline wheel cleaners and any silicone-based products because they stain.
Use a towel instead of a chamois leather to dry the car.
Always check the cleaning materials regularly to make sure there’s no mess in them.
Always dry the bodywork in puny circles to prevent streaking.
Take your time and love washing the car.
Mr Sahota said: ‘The very first time I cleaned a Ferrari Enzo it took a week and when I attempted to sleep all I could see was Ferrari crimson.
‘I just want perfection. Completing is the best part because you know what it was like when you embarked. That gives me excellent satisfaction.’
Mr Sahota, a long-time car enthusiast, began researching car cleaning methods whilst at university. After graduating, he enrolled on a valeting training course, only to abandon because he realised he knew more about the process than the bodyshops and technicians who were supposed to be training him.
He set up the business after persuading an Aston Martin dealer to let him clean a DB9 for free.The dealer was so amazed with his work he passed Mr Sahota’s details on to clients.
He is now in the process of moving the business from his parents’ home in Derbyshire to a fresh workshop he is opened in Worcester.
Despite spending his days cleaning other people’s supercars, Mr Sahota is presently car less, having recently sold his boyhood favourite car, the Mk I Volkswagen Golf GTI.
He would not expose the identities of many of his super-rich clients, but said he did regularly clean an Aston Martin DBS Volante belonging to the millionaire celebrity lawyer Nick ‘Mr Loophole’ Freeman.