Are automatic car washes really that bad for a car if they are soft cloth? Washing the LS outside is really not an option in the winter.

 

The car wash I use is the no-touch, brushless, high water pressure type. I use this in the winter to get the salt off the car. It does not do a good wash on the body panels but the glass portions are washed well. Again, in winter I have no other choice even though it breaks my heart every time I go into the car wash!

 

I will only use the brushless no-touch car wash occasionally when I cannot do it myself because of weather . . .

 

Auto car washes are fine and dandy so long as they are touchless.

Auto car washes with brushes and rags and such can produce one heck of a lot of swirl marks which people don't tend to notice until they see the sun shine at the right angle one day and they never realize those swirls were caused by the car wash putting hundreds of thousands of very hard to see scratches in their finish that look bad in full sun and also serve to reduce the gloss of the paint in any lighting.

However with that said, the average joe that I see washes his or her car with an old ratty mit or towel that hasn't been truly cleaned and rinsed off in years despite being not only visually dirty but having been used on metallic brake dust on the wheels and fenders and having been dropped on the driveway half a dozen times to pick up all sorts of tiny hardly noticeable bits of sand, dirt, and pebbles.

And when I see those people say they don't use touch-based auto car washes yet they use a mit in that condition I wanna slap them.

 

I use four thoroughly rinsed lambskin mitts each time I wash my car