The Super Valet across West London and Heathrow

Four corridors

What a year on each road does, and what the Super Valet undoes

The M4 corridor: Hounslow, Feltham, Southall, Slough

Airport cars. Heathrow is Feltham's biggest employer and the approach runs over Hounslow and Southall, so the paint takes an oily film every week and the cabin takes the shift pattern: coffee, breakfasts, receipts and the dust that settles on a dash in the dark. The wax half keeps the film rinsing off for a season; the restoration half, done while the shift worker sleeps once the car is unlocked, puts the cabin back. Slough's lease cars, on drives in Cippenham, Langley and Burnham, get the same twice a year with the photographs kept for the hand back.

The A40: Ealing, Hanwell, Greenford, Northolt

Family cars. The Queen of the Suburbs runs the school run, Lammas Park, the Common and Horsenden Hill, and the second car on the drive looks like it by the end of a season. The shampoo and extraction lift the park out of the carpets rather than flattening it in; the wax keeps the lime honeydew off the roof next summer.

The Metropolitan line: Harrow

Commuter cars. Metroland's newest cars sit on drives under century old avenues and do the station car park in the dark. A Super Valet twice a year keeps a lease car looking new to the end, and a restored interior sells a private car faster than a shiny bonnet.

The river: Staines, Twickenham, Sunbury

Damp cars. Between the Thames and the Colne the winter is wet, and the salt from the M25 and the Staines Road gritters walks into the cabin on wet shoes. The autumn Super Valet goes in first, so the paint carries a wax into the wet; the spring one takes the tide marks out of the carpets before they set.

Timing

Gritters set the dates, the approach sets the gaps

Hounslow Highways puts six gritters and 1,200 tonnes of salt on the Bath Road and Staines Road from mid November, and Ealing, Harrow, Spelthorne and Slough do the same on their main roads. Everything about the Super Valet's calendar follows from that. The autumn one is booked for late September or early October, so the wax is on the paint before the first salt and the summer's sand and grass are out of the carpets before the wet gets into them; with the clocks gone back on 25 October, the 10am window is the one that gets the outside done in good light. The spring one waits for the first dry fortnight after the gritters stand down, when the tide marks lift out of the carpets before they set and the paint gets a fresh layer for the summer under the approach.

Under the approach itself the gaps between those two are shorter, because the film has no off season: a Deluxe Inside & Out every four weeks on the M4 corridor, every four to six elsewhere, holds what the Super Valet did. Two cases break the calendar. A car going on sale or back to a lease company gets a Super Valet the week before the photographs or the inspection, whenever that falls. A car that has had no care for a year or more gets the Deep Clean first, two slots, and the Super Valet only afterwards.

Who books it across the west

• A Feltham baggage handler's hatchback in October: wax on before the soot and the salt, cabin reset while the driver sleeps off the night shift.
• A Southall terrace car early on a Sunday: every door open at the kerb, the Broadway's year out of the seat gaps.
• An Ealing seven seater after the summer holidays: Lammas Park and the Common extracted from the carpets.
• A Harrow lease car twelve months from its inspection: the Super Valet now, dated photographs filed for later.
• A Staines estate car whose glass will not clear: the spring booking, the river lifted out of the fabric.
• A Slough company car with a For Sale sign coming: the week before the advert's photographs.

More on this: the Super Valet in Hillingdon and the deep clean explained.