A success story from two years ago by DANIEL MICHAELS WALL STREET JOURNAL
STUTTGART, Germany - Eric Wulf has seen lots of carwashes but none like the Mr. Wash here."This thing will stand forever," the chief executive of the International Carwash Association recalls thinking while on a trip from Chicago. "There's more concrete and steel here than at 10 carwashes in the U.S." The two-story structure needs to be strong because it can wash over half a million cars annually. America's biggest carwashes handle around 200,000 cars, Mr. Wulf says. On Mr. Wash's upper level, machines slather a car's outsides. Then an army of smiling staff attack lingering water streaks and interior dirt. Extra buffing lines will open soon. On the lower level, fastidious customers can continue cleaning with free vacuum hoses, compressed-air guns and special machines to wash floor mats.
"It's not polite to talk about yourself, but I haven't seen anything like it," says Mr. Wash Chief Executive Richard Enning. A few of his 32 other outlets are almost as big. Germans love cars. They also tend to like things tidy. Now they're building temples to clean cars. The Stuttgart Mr. Wash is probably the world's busiest and most expensive carwash. It cost roughly $40 million to build seven years ago and employs about 40 people on a busy day for cleaning. Drivers can also tank up or get an oil change. Mr. Enning wants Mr. Wash to be the spot for a spotless car in Stuttgart, the hometown of Mercedes-Benz and Porsche. From afar, the orange structure with curved silver protrusions resembles a glitzy shopping mall or some sort of spaceship. "A high-class hotel also thinks about the architecture," says Mr. Enning, whose father opened one of Germany's first carwashes in 1964.
Inside, classy touches include a man in white gloves who directs drivers to conveyor belts for robotic sudsing. After that, patrons can sip complimentary coffee amid potted plants and the strains of classical music while teams polish and vacuum. Staff are even instructed on how to fold and refold wiping cloths so dirt doesn't move from one surface to another. "We like to provide the feeling of getting a new car out of the factory," said branch manager Robert Kerbler as a tan Skoda wagon rolled off the line. "A clean car puts you in a good mood."
Few things make serious German drivers smile like inching through a foam bath and undulating scrubbers, said Mr. Kerbler while watching machines turn a black Audi white with soap. "Sometimes I come and just look at customers' faces as they go through."
Competition among thousands of smaller carwashes countrywide keeps the price of a basic cleaning low and means Maybach drivers aren't the only Germans addicted to car washing. "It's not a class thing," said Jens Böhnlein, while washing his girlfriend's Mini at the buzzing Mr. Wash in Frankfurt on a summer Saturday. The day before he washed his company-issued Audi. "Look around it's all shiny cars on the road." Josef Marine, washing his black BMW nearby, said he knows people who come every few days. "There's nothing to do on a Saturday," shrugged Mr. Marine, who said he only washes his car weekly. Germany's neighbours manage to find distractions. "In France, we almost never wash our cars," says Dominique Fouda, a Bordeaux native who lives in Cologne. "German carwashes are a phenomenon unto themselves."
They also get a boost from authorities who strictly enforce bans on home-washing aimed at conserving water and preventing pollution from detergents. Drivers with a more French attitude can receive notes from neighbours urging cleanliness. Best Carwash, an upmarket German chain, features on its website a video about a Lothario preparing for a rendezvous who finds his convertible covered in dirt. When he rings his date's door, after a stop at Best, she pushes past him and kisses his freshly washed Saab. Cars in China get washed more often than ones in Germany, but mostly by hand, says Johannes Bulling, investor relations manager at car-washing equipment giant WashTec AG.
German carwashes are unusual for their level of automation, says Mr. Wulf in Chicago. Many innovations at U.S. carwashes, such as free vacuums, have come from Germany, he says.
WashTec, based near Munich, traces its roots to a washing-machine company founded in 1896—the same year that Karl Benz patented the world's first automobile near Stuttgart, the company proudly notes. Another German company now part of WashTec patented one of the world's first automatic car-washing machines in 1962.
Around the same time, Joseph Enning discovered carwashes while living in New York. "There was a lot of human labor involved," recalls his son, Richard.
Back in Germany, the elder Mr. Enning opened his first wash in Düsseldorf and then bought out a small chain in Hamburg. As Mr. Wash grew, he frequently returned to the U.S. seeking innovations.
Abundant cheap labor kept lots of elbow grease in American car washing for years, as immortalized in the 1976 comedy film "Car Wash," about poorly paid scrubbers in car-obsessed Los Angeles. But in Germany, labor shortages after World War II and a love of machinery accelerated automation.
"Germany is an engineering country," says Mr. Bulling at WashTec.
IMO Car Wash Group, founded in Germany in 1965 and now the world's largest carwash chain with over 800 outlets globally, boasts it can wash a car in under two minutes. IMO, which was bought recently by a British private equity group, still builds its machines in Germany.
Best Carwash, positioned between IMO and the more premium Mr. Wash, offers driverless cleaning. Motorists can watch their cars get bathed through portholes from a parallel hallway. At its flagship location, not far from Cologne, amenities include a tropical fish tank, free espresso using Best Wash's custom-labeled beans and a "Dog Bar" with complimentary dog food and water.
Mr. Enning aims to stay ahead. He just remodeled the Nuremberg Mr. Wash with 80 indoor self-cleaning stations. His location in Mannheim is surrounded by grass and trees.
The Stuttgart location benefits from high real-estate prices that deter rivals. It also gets a lift from locals whose intense hatred of dirt even draws smirks from other Germans.
"In Stuttgart," says Mr. Böhnlein of the Frankfurt Mr. Wash, "people love their cars more."
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