Over the Top Detailing Studio's

I've always been fascinated with over the top things. My favourite movie when I was young was Richy Rich, he had a roller coaster in the backyard so you probably get the idea of what kind of over the top I am thinking of. Naturally the love for over the top followed to detailing studio's. For a person doing corrections on the driveway and on the lawn, Bobs or Kens studio is pretty nice and it gets the job done and I thought they were great but THEN I found these places. They are just crazy compared to your detailing studio sure they get the job done, they are made to publicly show what detailing it and make it fascinating for the owners of the car.

First up:
[video=youtube;4Xh4uaQeAtk]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Xh4uaQeAtk[/video]

Secondly: Meet Darren, his detailing studio is one crazy looking place but when you see the cars he details then you'll see how he can afford to the lights on and then some.

Copied from another forum.......
Hello everyone!

Been a forum member here a while back but have been a closet lurker. Thought I'd pop by and share some photos taken recently. I had just built a brand new state-of-the-art detailing studio to accommodate the volume of cars that we detail here in Malaysia. And as with detailing, there are constantly cars being detailed on overlapping schedules. It's been a blast putting together a detailer's wish-list for the perfect batcave.
As I am also a keen photographer, part of the items on the list was for a photography light-room(which doubles as an inspection room for LSP streaks, smears and what-nots). Those of you who have known me from years back would be familiar with the photos I took outside my previous detailing garage and shared on Flickr here.

Here's the first right-hand drive Mercedes Benz AMG SLS in the world. Had to keep it till now because of a previous press embargo. Glad to share it now, enjoy the shots!










My detailing studio is located inside a new commercial retail/office/f&b complex at ground level which we picked so that low-profile cars can access the floors without any steep inclines/declines. The studio is security-equipped with CCTV's, gated-access, proximity card systems, complete fire-fighting system and a third-party central monitoring system. It's about 12,000 sq ft so we placed security as a priority to monitor the entire area. Here are some photos to share...




















Surface Preparation
Essentially I've got 4-wet bays that comes with it's own quad-stage de-ionized water purification system for surface preparation and includes individual cold & steam high-pressure jets. Once the wet-works are completed, I've got a combination of air-compressor dryers and forced-induction blowers to dry each car effectively.

Interior Detailing
On the interior detailing portion it's 8 bays. It's fitted with specialized steam extractors that can clean exotic materials like deep-pile carpets and alcantara at 5% moisture and also regular extractors for general upholstery.

Paintwork Detailing
Moving to the paintwork detailing bays, I've got 8-bays which are a combination of standard detailing bays, vertical-access detailing bays(lifts) and discreet detailing bays(curtained-off to keep new-cars being polished discreetly). This excludes overflow sections. Each detailing bay(that includes interior and wet bays as well) is packed with fluorescent lighting equipment which is daylight balanced for accurate color-rendering of each car's paintwork at approx 400lux. Each car is flanked by a secondary bank of four metal-halide inspection floodlights to pick-out every single imperfection mimicking variable daylight exposure.

Special Applications Booth
In the furthest section of the detailing studio is a special applications booth which is equipped with an air filtration system complete with an extractor similar to paint booths as we use it to apply our proprietary paintwork coatings and is cured with several banks of UV-lights. This clean-room is the brightest and also where we perform custom 3M vehicle film wraps and for window tints as well.

Inspection Rooms
We nickname this the darkroom because of the black walls, ceiling & marble flooring. They absorb the lights from the florescent tubes, metal halide inspection floodlights and PLC lamps. It doesn't bounce or reflect light from the surfaces. These combination of lights allow us to inspect the car in the various low ambient settings as those found on motor-show floors, showrooms and hotel lobbies. They contrast with the paintwork detailing bay lights. This section is fully air-conditioned and has it's own ionizer and air filtration system. They double up as thermostatically-monitored storage rooms over extended periods of time.

Lightroom
This is a photography studio purpose built for shooting cars. It spans a massive overhead lightbox engineered with 400 fluoro tubes and has 10 fans cooling the lights. Walls and the fire-resistant polyurethane flooring are white in color. I use it to commercially produce assignments and custom albums for my clients seeking to document their automobile collection.

The Lounge
Here is the customer lounge which is an industrial grunge design and has audiophile speakers, a plasma screen, a concrete-cast conference table equipped with powerpoints for notebooks, WiFi-access, a drinks dispenser and finally is iPad-equipped for clients to browse and play games while waiting for their cars.

That's the place in a nutshell. There's a separate office area, a children's room for my kids to do their homework/play and a nicely sorted warehouse.

Here's a rare Ford GT40, a kit custom-built in South Africa. It's been on a local classic car circuits and is also the only unit in the country. There's something timeless about this Ford!







Off course these are just samples, visit his flikr account for some more pictures of his projects. His website www.autodetailer.co


Post up some pictures of studio's you think are over the top...

 

The second one is tits through and through.

The first one is just a standard Mexican worker whip and swirl auto spa that's common in California. It's just been equipped with a fancy exterior to pull in high-end clientele.

 

The second one is nuts, definitely must have a 200% upcharge to get anything done there. Lavaggio seems cool, but imo gimmicky.

 

Man the guy that own the second set up is flat out insane dont even know of Paul Dalton has a setup that nice. The first is really just like if your going to a hotel that happens to also wash your car, yet they use the one bucket fail method and you pay up the @$$ for it LOL the pampering is really for you and not your vehicle.

 

Exactly what I was thinking. They probably do about as good as a job as a car dealer would.

 

He actually claims it's cheaper for his clients to send him there cars and I have no I idea what he is talking about but he's in Malaysia and he gets business from around the world U.K, Germany H.K...... but even if he just did Malaysia he would be good...people of there know how to spend money on there cars and man do they spend. It's part of a socio-economic status thing over there and it's really important. My grandfather does business around those countries and he claims he has to buy cars there and keep them 100% all the time or else people refuse to do business(They say it's about character).

 

The first one scares me more than anything, reminds me of a dressed up hack shop. The second one though, impressive!

 

In California its all about the perception...... It does look like a standard carwash with the typical employees you would see at any one of the many car washes around SOCAL.....

I can put a cool sign on my lawn and talk with a sophisticated accent, maybe I can be like them?

 

The first one after getting past the snobby backdrop appears no better than the corner carwash.

 

its like putting lipstick on a pig........

 

That second one is outright ridiculous

 

First one looks like a gimmick, now the second one...OMG!

 

Apologies on the very delayed updates. Just starting to have some time to share some of the going-ons. We've been working on some pretty cool projects and I'll update some of them hereon forth. Enjoy!


Here's a Ferrari 599 GTB Fiorano that was detailed recently:

 

This has nothing to do with the thread but I find this very funny

 

i dunno, i actually checked out lavaggio youtube page and watched a few of the videos. they seem to do a pretty good job. definitely way above the quality of tunnel washes around here. I mean, foam baths for washing, multiple wash mitts, sonax products, paint correction 50/50 pictures in the cayenne video. Looking at how the place is run in the videos I can't imagine it to be THAT bad. You guys are making it seem like its not any good at all. just my opinion, and obviously being from NJ i've never been there so I could be wrong.

second one is outright ridiculous though...haha took your words vinsanity

Edit:...what the hell is that VW bettle doing in there?!

 

Why is there a VW Beetle in there?

 

^ because racecar

just kidding, even bettle drivers like to take car of their cars.

 

I thought Lavaggio was nice as well, all though the second does blow it out of the water. The first one has even employeed a Meheecan Bob "Correctasarus" Willis





(Click to enlarge)

 

Mmmm... bacon...