I have a confession to make: Although I have spent decades cultivating my image as a rootin’ tootin’ rally driver, a man who scoffs at the wussy-boy clean-car crowd who collapse in shivering collywobbles at the sight of a dirt road, who counts every rock chip as a badge of honor, the truth is that too many years spent wandering around the Oktoberfest concours and Legends Of The Autobahn have corrupted my aesthetic senses. In fact, I have occasionally parked on concours lawns myself—but only in order to display a car, not to enter it into some sort of anal-retentive OCD competition.
But that was before Nick Griot and his crew ruined me.
You have probably run into Nick at some BMW CCA event or another; he’s there with three or four diligent young enthusiasts reminding us that Griot’s Garage provides the Official Car-Car Products of the BMW Car Club of America. And last year I took a car to Oktoberfest that I thought they might enjoy as a demonstration vehicle, because even I can find pleasure in cleaning Nancy Drew, the elegant blue Z8 that has come to dominate my garage, my credit-card balance, and my bank account.
Of course, when I say cleaning Nancy Drew, I mean something a little less intense than what the Griot’s gang did in New Jersey. I mean, they went at the blue roadster with lotions and potions and gadgets and grinders and blue rags and green rags and white ones as well, until—well, you would not have believed ol’ Nancy had a hundred thousand miles on the clock. She looked like a show car, and the stunning Topaz paint was truly dazzling.
So I felt some remorse after driving the car home to California. My usual washing technique usually involves driving over to the Pearl Street car wash and having lunch while busy attendants clean the car. I pay them extra to clean the wheels, because I would rather eat bugs than deal with brake dust, icky icky ick. Then I go home and take a rag to the spots the car-wash guys missed.
But this year—well, it was time for Monterey. I had made it home with two days to spare, and I was concerned that all that Griot’s work had gone for naught, because after five days on the road, poor Nancy Drew looked like she’d been rode hard and put away lathered. In fact, lathered is a pretty good description of the car after a certain amount of rain in Arkansas. And one friend looked at the front of the car and said, “Those look like triple-digit bugs to me.”
Nothing like a case of dirty-car guilt.
So I thought it was time for me to throw in the towel—whah! See what I did there?!—and actually clean the car, detail it at least a little bit before I got to Monterey; I mean, what if Nick Griot were to see the car there?! The guy takes a certain pride in his work, and I hate that wide-eyed look that says dude, what have you done to my car?!
Nor did I resort to Lemon Pledge.
Well, I was sixteen when I tried that shortcut; let’s not rehash that episode again. This time I started, as I usually do when I am forced to clean a car myself, with a spray bottle of spray-it-on, wipe-it-off stuff that at least gets you down to where you can see the color of the car again. And horrors: What I saw was hazing, scuffs, and scratches.
It was time to actually put to use the detailing lessons I’ve ignored over the years.
Fortunately, I own two Griot’s polishing machines, and a variety of foam discs that go on them, and Griot’s polishing compounds numbered one through four, not to mention an inventory of Meguiar’s and Mother’s products that I’ve collected over the years. It’s not that I have any plans of opening a detailing service, but Party A has been subtly giving me these products for Christmas for several years in the futile hope of reforming me. And sure enough, by spending a day dripping sweat into the polishing compound—sort of like spit-shining shoes, I guess—I brought Nancy Drew to a point where she could go out in public again. Fortunately, in Monterey the car was treated to a fine dusting of forest-fire ash, so nobody examined my work all that closely.
In fact, by this point I was so far gone that I rashly entered the car in New Mexico's Santa Fe Concorso.
I don’t know, maybe it was the Griot’s fumes. In any case, by the time we got back from Monterey, the car—surprise, surprise—was dirty again. But by now I was almost looking forward to the ritual of polish polish polish wax wax wax. I began to identify with the people who enter concours events on a regular basis; maybe we need a support group, or dedicated intervention. I was almost enjoying myself.
But then I got to the rocker panel.
I don’t know what I drove through or when I drove through it, but the underside of the right-side rocker was covered with a petrified layer of dripping goo. Well, it was no longer dripping; whatever it was had hardened into stalactites of what resembled pine sap or epoxy resin. I tried various chemical cleansers, several of which would have horrified Nick Griot, I’m sure; I stopped just short of lacquer thinner, because this glop was just not coming off. I actually attacked it with a plastic scraper, with little result; I was tempted to try a razor blade, but the last time I used one of those to scrape tree sap off a car, the result was unfortunate.
I admit to you now that some—maybe most—of the glop is still there.
If the car is named after my first feminist hero of childhood literature—Nancy Drew drove a blue roadster; how inspirational is that?!—then this glop was by Dr. Seuss; I think it first appeared in Bartholomew and the Oobleck. But I had to let it go after spending most of two days in frustration—it was time to hit the road to Santa Fe for the concours!
By this time it did not surprise me at all that in the middle of a severe drought, we managed to find two days of rain. And I’m not talking about sprinkles; this was monsoon weather, a frog-strangling downpour, when visibility ends on the inside of the windshield. Two days of it, although the storms abated as we reached Santa Fe.
With about two hours left in our schedule to clean the car once more.
After that, I was convinced that this would be my last concours. My fingernails were bent and broken; my back had taken on a permanent crook. But we were committed: 2016 is BMW’s 100th anniversary, and there would be a BMW on the lawn at Santa Fe Concorso! Make us proud, Nancy Drew! Dig out the Speed Shine, Carlson!
I need not have worried about BMW presence, for the same gorgeous BMW 503 convertible that won its class at Pebble Beach was also present in Santa Fe, and it was again stunning—so much so that it won the grand prize for road cars. Nancy Drew? Well, we didn’t win anything, although many people came by to admire the car. The reward was just to be there—plus the road trip, of course—admiring beautiful cars in a venue that must be something like Pebble Beach was half a century ago, when you could still see the cars instead of all the mobs of people in front of them.
Yes, I will no doubt return to Santa Fe, but not to enter a car. We love the event, and we have friends there. Now that I am an expert detailer, I will offer technical advice even before anybody asks for it. Maybe carry a bottle of Speed Shine in a belt holster. Give people lectures on clay.
Meanwhile, we are home again, and the car should probably be cleaned once more before we put it away for the nonce. Maybe the wax is hard enough to leave for a few months, or I might get ambitious if I find myself with time on my hands. I really think that this detailing business can be therapeutic.
And as for that oobleck-covered rocker panel, I still have a gallon of lacquer thinner. And a box of razor blades.—Satch Carlson
