The one closest to my home is indeed a Tommy’s.
There’s a place near me that I suppose is a mid-end car wash?
You pull up and stop at a station that has long-handled brushes and tubs of suds. You give your car as much of a scrubbing as you care to and then go to the wash, where you can spend between six and 20 bucks (I always choose the $6 option) for about what you’d expect from a drive-thru. On your way out, you can stop at a large bank of vacuums, which are also free to use. There’s a vending machine that will sell you a single-use interior wipe of your choice for another dollar.
Seven bucks for a scrub, a wash, a vacuum, and a wipedown strikes me as a damned good deal even if you have to do most of it yourself. I go every couple of weeks.
In my experience–
The day that your car doors freeze shut because the water from the car wash froze before it could dry, is the day that you swear off winter car washes forever.
I have always figured that a car wash was mostly a real estate play. Someone buys a property with a nice location and wants to hold it for a number of years for whatever reason. A car wash seems like a perfect little money-spinner to help with the monthly payments until the time comes for something else.
That sounds more like a poor car wash with inadequate drying than an inherent problem with winter washing. I’ve never had that happen. @LSLGuy is right. Salt-laden slush is a really bad thing to leave sitting on metal body panels or underbody components.
Detailers/valet services aside, pretty much all the systems described above are available here in the UK. Some have set up on the sites which used to be filling stations, now driven out of business by market forces.
I use the service that set up om my local supermarket. They don’t use swirly brushes, just a power lance, vacuum and elbow grease. The cost varies from a basic soap and rinse the outside at £10 and £50 for the full month on a big car. I usually go for a £20 pretty thorough clean, inside and out at £20.
Most of these sites are operated by East European immigrants. I would hazard a guess that costs will rise as a result of Brexit.
The 4-location chain in San Jose, Classic Car Wash, used to be reasonably priced–around $15 or so for a basic exterior wash/interior vacuum job. I used to go there fairly regularly but prices skyrocketed to where it costs something like $40. The only time I go there now is when I get a free wash coupon that comes with getting my car serviced.
There’s a local “car wash tunnel” that’s unique in that it’s the first one I seen that wasn’t attached/affiliated to a regular gas station.
My local car wash tunnel has 3 payments, a $7, a $10 and a $15, the higher end ones promising “waxes” and “undercarriage cleaning” but having done the more expensive ones once each just to try I noticed literally nothing different when I was sitting in the tunnel having my car automatically pushed along. I do wonder if that’s a scam, do the car wash operators on their console really press a button that distinguishes my $15 car wash from the $7 car wash car in front of me and the $7 car wash car behind me?
I’ve wondered the same thing.
I can’t speak specifically about now, but back in the olden days my first job at 13 was a drive thru car wash. At that time, paying extra for a wax was a scam because every car got wax on it because it was easier to blow dry that way. There was a great big sign asking to tell the employees if your car had recently been painted, that way we could turn off the wax as it spotted on new paint jobs.
I live in NY, so no car for me there, but we have a place in the city where my wife’s family lives, right on the ND/MN border. Very cold there and I have never heard if it happening there. The times that happens is usually freezing rain, which will also freeze all your doors shut so you can’t get in your car at all. Since cars now have flimsy handles that you can only grasp with you fingertips, I’ve actually had to use a screwdriver to pry open car doors.
They do sell tiny canisters of single use lock de-icer but I don’t think many people think to buy them ahead of time.
There’s a new-ish car wash chain in my town with several locations. They’re very modernistic looking. The wash tunnel features flashing neon lights, and squirts multicolored soap. Going through that thing is like an acid trip.
The cheapest wash is five bucks, so the sign out front features a gigantic numeral 5. A couple of weeks ago, I drove to a town about a half-hour away to get my covid-19 vaccination. I immediately noticed that this other town has an identical car wash that’s part of the same chain—but THIS one has a gigantic “3” on the sign. WTF?!? They get $3 washes and we don’t?
The new car wash that’s closest to my home has TWO entry/payment lanes which merge into one as you approach the tunnel entrance (sort of like how some McDonald’s locations have their drive-thru set up). I can’t figure out how they keep track of which car goes with which wash configuration. Of course, the simplest explanation is that everybody gets the same wash. Sounds like something that Bob Woodward should investigate. 
Back in the day before nearly all cars had remote lock/unlock capabilities via fobs, a quick hack for a frozen lock was to always carry a cheap Bic lighter. If the lock was frozen and wouldn’t turn, you’d heat up the key with the lighter, and insert it. It wouldn’t turn on the first try, and it might take five or ten tries, but eventually, the hot key had melted enough inside that it would turn.
It didn’t work well in windy conditions, and it was best to keep your key-holding hand in a winter glove (this was before keys had plastic on them, and the all-metal key could get quite hot), but as one who never thought to buy lock de-icer ahead of time, this worked for me a number of times.
LOL. You very nearly made me choke on my dinner
Once, my car lock was frozen, so I walked like a mile to a hardware store, bought a hair dryer and a long extension cord and then stood there for five or ten minutes, waving the hair dryer at the lock while hoping that the snow plow wouldn’t come by, because the extension cord was running across the street to my apartment.
At the place near me, after you pay they write a code on your windshield with some kind of grease pencil. It’s only when you enter the tunnel that somebody looks at the code and pushes the button to activate the wash. I’m taking it on faith that there are different codes for the different levels of wash that you can buy.
Those that do remember tend to leave them inside the car in the glove box, under the seat, in the trunk, etc.
I always had garage parking at home while I lived in snow country. At work was a different matter.
Nothing better than getting to the parking lot at 10pm for the drive home while knowing the last 4 days’ snow, ice, and daily freeze/thaw cycles had been hard at work sealing your car in a cocoon of ice. I think my worst mess ever even took 45 minutes to get the first door open and another 30 to get the car safely drivable. It may have been cold that night but at least the wind was howling. Ask me how much I’m missing that happy ritual.
Car washes are booming here in my little midwestern area. We used to just have the one in my city, at the local BP station. That station closed down and now we have one at another, newer gas station, one free-standing one called Laser Wash at one end of town and one free-standing one called CleanLand. That one and the gas station one both opened up within the past few months.
There’s also 2 Redi-Washes (wash by yourself), 2 gas station washes, and 3 free-standing places in the towns adjacent to ours.
About 5 years ago a new touchless carwash was opened near me. Pay, drive in and your car is blasted with high pressure soap and water for a few minutes. Pull ahead and a you get a final rinse, wax spray if you paid for it then a finish blow dry. The one time I tried it I left with a broken fuel door latch and the rear wiper arm was bent, all from the high pressure water. Filed a claim with the company and of course it was rejected. They claim they are not responsible for damage to vehicles. I was seeing an attorney about another issue at the time and told her about the carwash. She sent a letter to the company on her letterhead. A month later got a check for $300 in the mail.
All of them make that disclaimer, frankly. But it has always been an issue that sometimes high-pressure wash can be TOO high-pressure.
I’ve not seen issues with high pressure water, but on my last car a particular car wash would blow out the trim piece that fills the empty roof rack mounting slot on one side of the car. It’s just friction fit with some rubber gaskets, so I guess the blower got under it just right.
More concerning was a gas station car wash where the rubber roll-up door at the end (usually kept down in cold weather until a car approached) didn’t go up, and my and several other cars were just pushed through it and it scraped along the hood, roof, and trunk. Fortunately it didn’t have a metal bar or anything at the bottom but it still caused a few small scuffs in the clear coat. I was not happy, filed a report, and never went back there again.