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Get Your Car Detailed Before Selling

You might be ready to get rid of your car and move onto something new, but if you want to get the highest sale price from your current ride, you need to have it detailed. A thorough cleaning and restoration shows that the vehicle has been well taken care of, and it makes the prospective buyer proud to drive their new purchase, making them more likely to agree to a higher price.

What is Detailing?

For most of us, cleaning a car is a matter of going to the local car wash, running the car through the automatic bay, then vacuuming out the interior. You might pay more attention to the underside of the car to stop road salt from rusting your vehicle, but cleaning rarely goes further than that.

Detailing involves deep cleaning and restoration of your car’s interior and exterior. With the right techniques, a car can be made to look almost new.

Why Detail?

Unless you’re buying a car specifically as a project, you want everything working when you get it.
When a buyer sees a fully detailed car, they see a vehicle that has been taken care of, making them more confident about a prospective purchase.

Selling your car online? Having photos of a clean, shiny vehicle is more likely to sway potential buyers toward looking at it. That means getting more offers and a higher sale price.

What Does it Take to Detail a Car?

The needs of each car are unique, but there are several areas that a detail will cover that are likely to be ignored during regular cleaning:

• Door Jamb Cleaning – Take a look at your door jamb the next time you open your driver door: unless you’re a cleaning fanatic, it’s likely the dirtiest part of your interior.
• Wheel Cleaning – Dirt and brake dust clings to wheels, making them hard to clean. Removing this buildup requires techniques that will keep the wheel’s metal and paint from being damaged.
• Tire Dressing – Tires are always in direct contact with the road, so they get the most exposure to salt and dirt. They’re also one of the few rubber components on your vehicle exposed to UV light, which ages them prematurely. Applying a dressing to the sidewalls makes them look new and helps protect them from salt and UV light.
• Paint Care – The shininess of the paint job is dependent on the flatness of the paint surface. If the paint is in decent shape, it can be cleaned and any tiny scratches can be filled in with a glaze. In areas with deeper scratching, the top layer of the clearcoat can be removed through buffing, creating an even finish with minimal oxidation.
• Carpet Shampooing – You may shampoo the carpet in your house now and then to keep it clean, but it’s easy to overlook your car, despite being exposed to dirty shoes, mud, snow, drinks and drive-thru French fries. Thorough cleaning of the carpet and floor mats can do wonders for both the look and smell of the interior.
• Dashboard and Panel Cleaning – Getting all the dust that gathers in the seams and surfaces of your car’s plastic interior components is a time-consuming experience, but it goes a long way toward making a good impression when a prospective buyer first looks inside the vehicle.
• Headlight Polishing – Over time, plastic headlight lenses get a rough, discolored surface due to a combination of exposure to water, dirt and UV light. Polishing the lenses restores clarity, improving both the look of the vehicle and the brightness of the headlights.

When You Need Your Car Detailed, Turn to the Experts

A professional detail can provide results that are hard to match at home while saving you hours of labor. Whether you want to make your car attractive to buyers or you feel like your vehicle just needs a refresh, take it to Merton Auto Body in Sussex, WI. We offer detailing services ranging from standard cleaning on up to buffing, polishing and even paint repair so you can make your car look as good as it runs.