“Watching the walk-around video is almost as good as looking round the car on the forecourt itself.”

Martin Peters, sales director at Autoclenz, says the partnership is another way Autoclenz can add value for its customers.

When it comes to manual labour versus machine, Wilcomatic believes it can present a compelling reason for the latter. According to Paul Griffiths, Wilcomatic business development manager, with an on-site rollover – the Christ Sirius C16  is Wilcomatic’s most popular – each car can be washed in about two-and-a-half minutes.

“Even for dealerships washing as few as 20 vehicles per day, the typical cost will be less than £2 a car over the life of the machine, including capital and installation costs, repair and maintenance, water, chemicals and power,” said Griffiths.

“These costs plummet if the number of vehicles is greater or the unit is replacing an older machine and compares with £3 to £8 per vehicle for outsourced valeting.”

Tim Udell, parts manager of Stratford-Upon-Avon Land Rover specialist Guy Salmon, said: “After talking to other dealers in the group, we decided it might be good for us to install a car wash.

“At some times of the year we are inundated with vehicles for repair and service and being Land Rovers and Range Rovers, many of them come in in a fairly muddy state. Valeters could not get them through quickly enough with just the jet wash.”

Guy Salmon, part of the Sytner Group, now has three rollover washers in its network of 12 Land Rover and six Jaguar dealerships.

 

Rollover machines offer greater efficiency

With about 40 service and demo vehicles a day passing through its Northampton site, Volvo and Kia dealer Bells also found it could not keep up with manual washing alone, so it acquired a rollover machine while maintaining jet washing to deal with oversized wheels on higher end vehicles.   

“Every member of staff can use the machine without having to be in work clothes, so our sales staff can put through cars that have been for a test drive on wet days and we can quickly wash cars that are being offered for part exchange to examine the bodywork properly,” said operations director Clive Bell.

When customers leave with a clean, shiny car after a service, it gives them “a psychological boost”, said Ashley Browning, service manager of Baylis Vauxhall, citing one of the reasons why the company installed a refurbished Wilcomatic rollover system.