A few of the coolest cars we’ve detailed in Spring of 2024

The first quarter of 2024 has come and gone. At Hunt for Details, we’ve been busy providing top notch car detailing services for daily driven vehicles and enthusiast car owners in Athens, GA area and beyond. In this post, I’m proud to show you some of the most memorable cars we’ve detailed so far this year. Don’t worry Subarus and Toyotas, we love you too.

Detailing a 1939 Mercury Sedan | Athens, GA

I mean, what a class act. This car was purchased by a existing customer at auction in Clayton, GA and brought back to its new home in Athens. The cosmetic condition of the car was rough, mainly the interior... it seriously needed a detail. With this kind of project, it’s really important to have a car detailer who knows what they’re doing. Experience counts with antique cars. The materials are so unlike those used today, and the wrong move or chemical can easily damage irreplaceable parts and finishes. I was honored that my customer trusted me with this handsome automobile, one of the few of its kind here in Athens.

This detailing service was a pleasure to execute because the car was a mostly original survivor example. Very little, outside of some repair paintwork, had been done to update or restore the car. My customer and I agreed that we wanted to clean and elevate its condition safely, while preserving the integrity and originality of the car’s finishes. It was important to be very gentle and modify expectations for this project so that we preserved as much originality as possible. With modern car detailing, we expect that many aspects of the cars finishes, particularly in the interior, can look “good as new” by the end of the service (depending on the car’s age, condition, and other factors). In this case, we knew going into it that 89 years of wear and decay could not be undone in a day’s work. Or even 2 or 3. Nevertheless, I was excited to get to work detiaiing this car because I knew it could still make a big transformation.

One of the processes we employed as part of the paint restoration was a clay bar service. People sometimes hear about clay bars being used in the car detailing process, but its actual function is often misunderstood. Car detailers use clay bars because clay can reach into the pores of the surface of a car’s paint and draw out contaminants like tree sap or break dust. Claying a car is an abrasive process, so we don’t always utilize it as part of the detailing process. When I plan to polish a vehicle, using the clay bar a great preliminary step in order to make sure I’m working with a completely clean, contaminant-free surface.

Overall, we removed a ton of oxidation from the paint and gave it more depth and gloss while preserving as much paint as possible. The interior remains very original and with that comes some staining and decay that we chose not to attempt to remove. Restraint was important, but the entire car felt cleaner and refreshed after the detail. Antique cars have a lot of peculiarities and unique features that are no longer present modern cars, or even cars from 30 or 40 years ago. Things like the starter button under the accelerator pedal, or high beams on the floor, suicide doors make detailing these cars almost like going to a museum instead of going to work. I really enjoy antique projects and have worked on several others that call Athens, GA home, including 1930s Fords, Packards, and Lincolns.

If you have an antique car and are looking for detailing services in the Athens or Oconee GA area, please give me a call at (770) 833-8102. I greatly enjoy these types of projects and have worked on a number of antique cars as well as countless vintage cars.

Major transformation detailing service for a Porsche 911 | Athens, GA

Is that the same car? Surprisingly, yes.

When a local Athens customer inherited this Porsche, it was in poor condition to say the least. We set up a full car detailing service with the goal of resetting the condition as a driver quality car. The amount of neglect that this car suffered it is unfortunate, meaning that a lot of intricate cleaning was required. There was a large rodent’s nest in the front trunk, and the spare tire needed to be removed as part of the cleaning process. We removed debris from the engine bay and virtually every other compartment as well. Dirt and debris had settled in so many crevices of this car that, actually detailing the vehicle required a fair amount of disassembly in order to fully access all of the hidden dirt and grime.

Porsche is my favorite marque of automobile, and having owned quite a few of them as personal vehicles, I am intimately familiar with them. Sometimes components of a car need to be disassembled in order to be fully cleaned. It’s also important to know what components of the car not to disturb because they might be fragile or not easily replaced. I’ve seen countless Porsches – all eras and models – and I always look forward to days when I have them on the calendar.

Overall this car made a dramatic transformation. It will never be a show quality car, but I think it has a lot of life left in it. I have high hopes that my customer will enjoy it for years to come.

If you are in need of excellent detailing service in and around Athens, GA, there is simply no one who will take better care of you than Hunt for Details.

Car detailing, retro style with a gleaming Buick Electra | Athens, GA

I loved working on this 1960s Buick Electra. It’s such a beautiful car. Its size and styling speak to the quintessential 60s convertible era, and overall just makes you want to say, “They don’t make them like they used to!” The unique interior complimented the exterior styling, with a dazzling dashboard that featured a bejeweled design. This kind of design is simply never found on modern cars. Rather than a restorative project, this Buick was brought in for a regular detailing service as it was going to be used in a wedding outside of Athens that very weekend. The detailing service felt purposeful and exciting as I could easily imagine the bride and groom riding away in style.

Like many cars of this era, rust had begun to take its toll on some areas. The style of the 60s was superb, but the rust-proofing technology of the era was simply not what it is today. Even though the paint on this car is in pretty good shape, there was a fair amount of bubbling and corrosion beginning to rear its ugly head. This car detailing service was specifically focused on freshening the car up for the wedding and we were on a deadline so paint correction was not in the cards. In future detailing services, I hope to be more preservation-oriented, addressing some of the more technical issues and buffing the paint to make it truly stand out at a car show.

Athens, GA is not a large town, but there are a surprising amount of rare, enthusiast and collector cars living right here in our community. I am continuously excited by what my local customers bring me!

Detailing service for a brand new Ineos Grenadier | Athens, GA

If you’ve never heard of Ineos, you’re part of the majority. This new marque was developed by a British billionaire whose chief goal was to design the ultimate off-road vehicle. The Ineos Grendaier is an alternative to the Mercedes G-wagon and the Hummer H1. It utilizes a BMW drivetrain and is built in Hambach, Germany in a former Mercedes plant. This is the first Ineos Grenadier delivered to Georgia, and its home is right here in Athens! The owner brought the vehicle to Hunt for Details with only delivery miles, meaning that the vehicle was brand new at the time we performed the detailing service.

Q: Does a brand new automobile really need detailing?

A: There are a couple of key reasons why having your brand new car detailed by Hunt for Details is a good idea, and we do it quite often.

First, if you’re interested in driving a vehicle that looks its absolute best, you may already know that many cars have cosmetic defects straight off the assembly line or blemishes that they pick up in the delivery process. Often the courtesy wash performed at the dealership imparts scratches and swirls due to hasty or lazy work. Many cars sit on lots before being shipped or purchased. There, they are wide open to receive any and all of the contaminants that cars pick up in daily life as they sit in driveways and parking lots. Many cars are transported by rail at some point in the delivery process, so the otherwise pristine paint can become laden with iron particles. Simply put, there’s a lot that happens to your new vehicle before it arrives in Athens, and many of those “delivery miles” are driven by a chain of people who are just doing what they have to do until they can clock out. Keeping your paint perfect probably doesn’t factor in there.

Second, for customers like this one who are interested in paint protection, “new” is the optimum time in the vehicle’s life cycle to apply a ceramic coating. In this case, we performed not only a classic car detailing service but also minor polishing and the application of a 5-year ceramic coating. Because the vehicle was brand new, the entire project was very straight forward. Had the vehicle been 5 years, 1 year, or even 6 months old, many more hours would have to be spent correcting imperfections before applying a ceramic coating. Paintwork is only new once. The best time to apply protection to a finish is when it is brand new or just corrected.

When performing the detailing service, it was very interesting to take note of the unique aspects of this vehicle’s interior. It is trimmed out in military-inspired switch gear. It feels like a mobile command center in the cockpit, and I have absolutely no concern about the longterm durability of the interior. Another curious feature is that Instead of just one horn, the Grenadier has both a road horn and a more polite, gentle horn for pedestrians and cyclists. Toot!

Restorative detailing service for Ferrari Testarossa | Athens, GA

Ah, the Testarossa. What really needs to be said about such an iconic automobile?

I was so excited to have a Ferrari Testarossa come into the shop. While I have worked on numerous Ferraris, this was the first time I had detailed the 80s supercar. When the car arrived, I realized that – while superbly cool – this was a classic example of the perils of buying an out-of-state car sight-unseen on an auction website. While the car looked fantastic in the carefully shot photos, it arrived in Athens, GA looking as tired as any other 40 year old automobile might look. Before even getting to the nuances of the detail, it was obvious that the car was just plain dirty.

The interior in particular required some heavy handed cleaning to remove years of dirt buildup from the seats and other surfaces. The image below shows a 50/50 during the dirt removal process on the leather.

On the exterior, some wet-sanding was required to massage out heavier defects. The paint was not original, so different body panels required different methods to achieve a uniform result. There were numerous panel gaps as well as recessing around badging and lights that required a lot of intricate approaches and patience. It turns out that the Ferrari badge itself was completely missing the proper attachment hardware and instead held on by gobs of silicone. We promptly fixed that issue to factory standard. I called in Ken Thacker of Hammerhead Dent Repair to address a few door dings and also applied some touch up paint. Overall, this kind of restorative detailing work is nuanced and not something I learned overnight. I was honored to be the one entrusted with refreshing this icon.

After a full car detailing service, paint correction, and ceramic coating application, this car made a major transformation. This was a challenging but fun project, and I enjoyed the opportunity to get to know the Testarossa better. I am glad to know that one is living right here in Athens. I’m looking forward to seeing it again for future details and Saturday car shows.