Heres the article I cut and paste it from NYT's website:
PS: Hopefully my neighbors read the article and understand why I'll detail my car in the 30 degree weather....
There is an automotive cult whose members worship at the altar of wax. They pray to the gods of weather to keep rain and snow at bay. They prize arcane combinations of potions and lotions. Their obsession is the car that gleams.
"We want a smooth, glasslike surface on our paint, where water rolls off in beads," said Dennis Salvo, 33, a clean-car fanatic turned professional automotive detailer in Madison, Conn., who serves a clientele with standards of car perfection akin to his own. "Contaminants slide right off with a wash."
Clean-car aficionados also want sparkling window glass, supple leather upholstery, spotless carpets, shiny wheels and clean-as-new tires. � and they want this immaculate state all the time.
Some in the clean-car cult shudder at the thought of an automatic car wash and will only hand-wash; others will go to car washes, but only those that are touch-free � using water jets and chemicals but allowing no friction from cloths. Some let professional detailers wax their cars; others insist on doing that job themselves. But for all, cars must glow with cleanliness.
"Our cars are cleaner than our kitchen," said Barbara Scardino of Brentwood, Tenn., whose husband, Michael, calls himself a "car clean freak" and maintains a red Honda S2000, a black Volkswagen New Beetle and a silver Chrysler minivan. "I believe in car washes," Mr. Scardino said. "You can't get enough water and detergent volumes at home with a bucket." But after a car wash, Mr. Scardino will do extra drying with a chamois cloth he keeps handy, and he details the cars himself periodically, getting the nooks and crannies that car washes miss.
And that is only the beginning of his car-care ritual.
"I believe in waxing," he said emphatically. He massages each car three times a year with a carnauba-based wax. "I use the cool method," he explained. "The garage is cool and the music is cool." (He favors cool fusion jazz.)
"I play Jobim," he said, "and I just take it easy, doing a small surface at one time." With Zenlike concentration and mental detachment, he uses two cloths. "Wax on with one, wax off with the other," he said. He likens his method to the scene of ritualistic car waxing in the film "The Karate Kid."
Before waxing he uses a glaze "to remove scratches and swirls." This is the process Mr. Scardino � an advertising creative director � has seen often when cars are prepared for commercials.
He does not like dust. He uses an anti-static spray that repels dust particles. And he removes dust that settles later with a special wax-impregnated mop.
Do car cleaners have a special love for their cars or do they just love to clean? According to Barry Meguiar, chief executive of Meguiar's, his family's automotive cleaning products company in Irvine, Calif., and host of the television show "Car Crazy" on the Speed Channel, "it's a mindset."
"I hear lots that keeping the car clean is therapy," he said. "People wax year-round, even when it's snowing. There's a peace of mind that people get from locking themselves in the garage when the weather is bad outside, turning on music, and cleaning the car." Eleven percent of the population, he added, purchases 75 percent of the car wax. He caters to this core group, as he calls it, with scores of cleaners and protectants for exterior, interior, wheels and paint, and with lots of waxes. The company's Web site,
www.meguiars.com, provides specific car-care "prescriptions" for individuals, based on information like ZIP code of residence and the color, age, make and mileage of the car.
April Bastian, 34, a dental assistant in Madison, has special buckets and brushes for cleaning the wheels, paint and top of her dark-green 2000 Volkswagen Cabrio, but she has no garage. "I'll go out with winter gloves underneath rubber gloves if the water in the hose isn't frozen," she said. "I will go to a coin-operated wash if I can't use my hose." When she is forced to use the car wash, she takes her own sponge and chamois. Three times a year, she takes her car to Details by Dennis, Mr. Salvo's business, for waxing and detailing, for about $120. (Details by Dennis grew from demand, Mr. Salvo said. People saw his own super-clean cars, he said, and asked where they could get the same kind of perfection.)
"I don't know how people can drive dirty cars," Ms. Bastian said. "I notice particularly clean cars as they pass me, and if mine is dirty at the moment, it reminds me I'd better get it clean right away."
She has not been able to persuade her fiancé, John Lariviere, to stick to the same standards. He drives an always dirty Dodge Durango, she explained.
"He kids me about my car cleaning," she said. "But if I had time, I'd wash his car, too."
and I am guessing he never heard of QEW. 
