The Australian Car Wash Association recently featured an article about the history of car washes in Australia. The article took us on a “leisurely drive to revisit a time when washing your car wasn’t just a task but was a genuine experience”.
The Australian Car Wash Association recently featured an article about the history of car washes in Australia. The article took us on a “leisurely drive to revisit a time when washing your car wasn’t just a task but was a genuine experience”.The article, titled Vintage Car Wash Snapshot, called us pioneers of the car wash industry as the importers of the “absolute ripper” Robo-Wash – the first automatic car wash in Australia.
Described as the “the sleek, automated marvel that hosed down your trusty chariot from roof to road”, the Robo-Wash cost just 50c and took an impressive two minutes.
The Robo-Wash was manufactured in Colorado in 1966 and quickly swept through the USA, Canada and Australia. With the introduction of decimal currency at the time, the cost per wash was a convenient 50c. Marketing material promised a nice, clean carwash in two minutes.
From that first installation, the Good Sight network grew and the ROBO car wash equipment was installed nationally throughout the Amoco fuel station network. Stainless steel carts (as seen in the photo above) ran around tracks that were set into the concrete wash bay floor. A special touchless powder concentrated chemical was mixed in a tank and high-pressure water was delivered to the wash bay through a large piston pump. The touchless car wash process has continued to operate much this same way for 50 years.
ROBO machines continued to operate throughout the AMOCO petrol station network until 1982 when we started converting these over to the Ryko (USA) rollover machines.
