Nissan's Tiny Car Wash Is The Accessory We Wish Matchbox Offered

Although it looks like a bizarre toy for cleaning model cars, Nissan's miniature car wash actually serves a purpose, testing paint samples for durability

There was probably a time in all of our childhoods where we imagined a tiny car wash for our Matchbox pride and joy. Nissan has now made a real version.

We seem to be enjoying a few random Nissan-related stories lately. The miniature car wash at Nissan’s Technical Center North America isn’t for keeping the staff’s model collections clean, though. It’s for testing new paint mixes for hardness, to make sure they can withstand the notoriously destructive rigours of a typical street-side machine car wash.

As much as we’d love the paint to be applied to model cars like the 370Z in these pictures, it isn’t. Instead, flat strips of painted metal like the yellow one you see beneath the car above are the test subjects. The blue spinning brush gets up to about 180rpm as water jets spray onto the surface, which has also been coated with an especially abrasive ‘Arizona test dirt’ mix.

Each test plate is washed in the mini car wash several times and the scale of the abrasion is assessed. It’s hoped that passing this test means that Nissans will stand up to regular trips to the car wash without suffering paint damage. Frankly, we’ll believe that when we see it…

Also, just in case you’re wondering, that Micra ‘dog car’ is still for sale…