1. How much do you care about the appearance of your car?
I am kinda a car guy, so yes. I have a Ram Ecodiesel 1/2ton truck that gets truly amazing mpg, and a restored late 80's BMW 5 series that needs to get sold. Neither has ever seen a car wash that used brushes, or has had someone else wash them. Therefore there are no swirls and every tiny flaw in the paint is on me. The BMW is black so keeping it's paint perfect is, well, impossible. The best one can do is "pretty good". I paid a lot, 5-6yrs ago for BMW to be repainted and wet sanded, but even after that I put huge huge hours with a buffer trying to make the black paint more perfect. But every time a cloth touches paint, there is a possibility that the paint might get damaged. I will never do black paint again. It's the road to hell.
In the various times that the car has been to a shop or dealer that I thought might be tempted to wash my car after it was serviced, I made a point of asking them to not wash my car.
2. If you think you need to take better care of the appearance of your car but don't what are the reasons you don't?
I'm lazy. The cars get vacuumed out and washed every month or two. I'm more oriented on being very very careful re. scratches and dings to the interiors and exteriors. I park away from other cars so no dings. The (3) kids aren't allowed to touch any sheetmetal, just the door handles. Nor are the kids allowed to eat/drink in the cars. Every 6 months or so each car get's a half day's worth of attention of careful washing, claying, wash again, buff with a dual action buffer, wash again, then apply an acrylic coating over the paint.
3. Do you notice swirl marks on cars?
My eye is immediately drawn to swirls, made clearly visible by the bright sun. It's hard for me to understand how most folks are so tolerant of shoddy car washing practices that do so much damage to their paint.
Wife has gone thru a number of SUVs in the past 15yrs. Several of them have been really nice. But she doesn't really give 2 shits about the car, to her it's just an appliance. The back is always full of sand and dirt from days at the beach or getting plants at Home Depot. The rear seat area is always dirty from the kids shoes and whatever snacks and drinks have been spilled lately. In general terms, the wife has pretty high requirements for things being neat and clean, but that does not seem to apply to cars.
Books @ Amazon "If only he had used his genius for niceness, instead of Evil." M. Smart
