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We had an opportunity to take a field trip to the local Manheim Auction facility yesterday, escorted by our local salesman who calls on this facility. Wow, what an eye opening experience! If you've ever leased a car or traded one in, they very often end up "going to auction", and that usually means Manheim. This particular location processes some 375 cars daily through their reconditioning center. There are other cars that need less attention, and some that need more, so a full body shop and mechanical service center are located on the premises.
We though you might get a kick out of the reconditioning center and paint shop, so here are a few shots for your entertainment.
There are literally thousands of vehicles present, scattered over several parking lots on campus.
The vehicles are fed through a 120' long building in 5 lanes, starting with a "de-trashing" of the interior and a pressure wash of the exterior and engine bay.
Once inside they are dried off, the glass is cleaned inside and out, tires are wiped down, and the vehicles all get treated to a machine buff. Really nasty issues are addressed with a rotary, but for the most part they're using G100s and now the new G110v2. These tools run literally 8 hours a day, virtually non stop! And notice all the waist high lighting the length of the line.
At several locations there are dispensing stations for various chemicals - Last Touch, APC, APC+ and the like. An operator need do nothing more than twist the nozzle off the top of the spray bottle, hold it under the spout and turn the valve. Sort of like a giant water cooler, except the line isn't going to a big bottle of product on a pedestal right in front of you. Oh no, it's coming through a line up in the rafters of the building, running out back to a storage area filled with drums of product!
Here's one of the dispensing stations, in this case Last Touch:
And here is the storage and pumping area. The white drums are the various products as we ship to Manheim, and the blue drums are plain water for mixing. Everything is set up for proper dilution ratios based on product requirements, and the pumps are pneumatically controlled. Everything is labeled so it isn't quite the bag of snakes it looks like at first. How cool would this be to have in your garage?!?!?
Anyway, once completed and waxed, the cars roll out into the sunshine once again and get a final once over being moved to another section of the lot prior to their day on the auction block.
Plenty of cars come back with curb rash on the wheels and other dings and dents. When needed or requested, they take a trip to the paint shop for correction/repair. There are 4 spray booths, each long enough to hold 5 vehicles, and they fill 'em up! Heck, they'll paint different colored vehicles in the same booth! In the case of the Mercedes shown here, most of the car is masked off to prevent overspray while the passenger side doors are repainted in black. The wheels were prepped outside and are now painted silver here in the booth.
As you can see, a beige car is sitting directly behind the black one, undergoing a repaint to the front bumper.
Here a Bentley is ready to undergo some paint work.
We weren't allowed to photograph the auction area, but once again there are 5 lanes going into a building that houses the auctioneers stands and large screen video displays so that purchasing dealers can keep track of each sale. Yes, that means there are 5 sales going on simultaneously, and the noise level is just crazy!! And the cars just fly through the auctions - they must move each car through in about 60 seconds. It's an amazing sight.
It must be said though, if you think this auction facility is just for "average" cars and the Bentley pictured above is an anomaly, think again. This was "high line day" at the auction house, meaning all the expensive cars were being auctioned. There were more Aston Martins, Maseratis and Rolls Royces going through the auction than you see at dealerships for those marques. A couple of Lamborghinis, plenty of AMG Benzes, and even a Jaguar XJ220 (only 281 were ever produced) sitting in the building! The whole thing was an incredible sight, sort of like a Barrett-Jackson event but run at quadruple speed and all the cars were just a couple of years old. Crazy stuff.
We though you might get a kick out of the reconditioning center and paint shop, so here are a few shots for your entertainment.
There are literally thousands of vehicles present, scattered over several parking lots on campus.
The vehicles are fed through a 120' long building in 5 lanes, starting with a "de-trashing" of the interior and a pressure wash of the exterior and engine bay.
Once inside they are dried off, the glass is cleaned inside and out, tires are wiped down, and the vehicles all get treated to a machine buff. Really nasty issues are addressed with a rotary, but for the most part they're using G100s and now the new G110v2. These tools run literally 8 hours a day, virtually non stop! And notice all the waist high lighting the length of the line.
At several locations there are dispensing stations for various chemicals - Last Touch, APC, APC+ and the like. An operator need do nothing more than twist the nozzle off the top of the spray bottle, hold it under the spout and turn the valve. Sort of like a giant water cooler, except the line isn't going to a big bottle of product on a pedestal right in front of you. Oh no, it's coming through a line up in the rafters of the building, running out back to a storage area filled with drums of product!
Here's one of the dispensing stations, in this case Last Touch:
And here is the storage and pumping area. The white drums are the various products as we ship to Manheim, and the blue drums are plain water for mixing. Everything is set up for proper dilution ratios based on product requirements, and the pumps are pneumatically controlled. Everything is labeled so it isn't quite the bag of snakes it looks like at first. How cool would this be to have in your garage?!?!?
Anyway, once completed and waxed, the cars roll out into the sunshine once again and get a final once over being moved to another section of the lot prior to their day on the auction block.
Plenty of cars come back with curb rash on the wheels and other dings and dents. When needed or requested, they take a trip to the paint shop for correction/repair. There are 4 spray booths, each long enough to hold 5 vehicles, and they fill 'em up! Heck, they'll paint different colored vehicles in the same booth! In the case of the Mercedes shown here, most of the car is masked off to prevent overspray while the passenger side doors are repainted in black. The wheels were prepped outside and are now painted silver here in the booth.
As you can see, a beige car is sitting directly behind the black one, undergoing a repaint to the front bumper.
Here a Bentley is ready to undergo some paint work.
We weren't allowed to photograph the auction area, but once again there are 5 lanes going into a building that houses the auctioneers stands and large screen video displays so that purchasing dealers can keep track of each sale. Yes, that means there are 5 sales going on simultaneously, and the noise level is just crazy!! And the cars just fly through the auctions - they must move each car through in about 60 seconds. It's an amazing sight.
It must be said though, if you think this auction facility is just for "average" cars and the Bentley pictured above is an anomaly, think again. This was "high line day" at the auction house, meaning all the expensive cars were being auctioned. There were more Aston Martins, Maseratis and Rolls Royces going through the auction than you see at dealerships for those marques. A couple of Lamborghinis, plenty of AMG Benzes, and even a Jaguar XJ220 (only 281 were ever produced) sitting in the building! The whole thing was an incredible sight, sort of like a Barrett-Jackson event but run at quadruple speed and all the cars were just a couple of years old. Crazy stuff.
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