Subaru Detailing

Paint

Soft — marks easily

Owners

Outdoor, dogs, racks

Cabin

Back-forward wear

Coating

Early, on the roof too

Soft paint

Japanese finishes generally, and Subaru's in particular, are soft by trade consensus. A drying towel, a duster, a brush wash — each marks a Subaru more visibly than it would a German car. The upside is that soft paint corrects easily and finishes to a high gloss. The downside is that it re-marks just as easily, so correction without a change in wash method is a year's reprieve.

Coating a Subaru is therefore worth more than usual, and coating the roof matters more than on most cars, because the roof is where the rack goes.

The rack

Most Subarus we see carry a roof rack, a cargo box, a bike rack or a kayak, and rack loading on soft paint leaves the directional scratching that a standard correction never looks for — along the rails, under the tower feet, on the rear pillars where things are leaned. Rain running off the rack leaves drip lines on the paint below each foot.

The rack-loading correction page and the rack and drip-line page cover both in detail. On a Subaru they apply with extra force.

The cabin of an outdoor household

Dog hair is the Subaru signature. It weaves into cargo-area carpet and rear-seat fabric and a vacuum removes the top layer and leaves the rest. It needs a rubber brush or a dedicated hair tool to lift it against the pile before vacuuming, and on a cargo area that has carried a dog for years that step is most of the job.

Behind the hair is the rest of the outdoor profile: trail mud in the rear footwells, wet gear in the boot, the spare well under the load floor collecting whatever drained through. The pet hair guide covers the home routine; the SUV page covers the load floor and the back-forward wear pattern.

Windscreens and the cabin filter

Subaru windscreens are large and the cabin intake on many models sits where it pulls in road dust and pollen readily. The interior glass takes on film fast and the filter loads fast, and on an outdoor vehicle that also carries a dog the filter is often the single largest improvement to how the cabin smells. We check it on every Subaru.