Undercarriage wash

Despite formally not being a car-owner since May 2025, I look after the Octavia (in papers a company car, under a subsidized scheme, due to be purchased well below its market value in March 2027) as it was mine. It had the oil changed after first 1,683 kilometres, then after 1 year with 11,201 kilometres on the clock and then had a full service after nearly 2 years and 18,502 kilometres. It was supposed to be a family car, yet life has verified my plans, but a sizeable estate car has proven useful in Szlachetna Paczka, facilitating moving (friends relocating from one flat to another) and surprisingly frequently it carries 4 persons on board.

The lesson learnt when selling the Megane after 14 years is that no matter how perfect the car might be in terms of mechanics, its softest spot is the undercarriage, not seen every day, not making itself felt until something cracks up, eaten up slowly by rust. Some time ago I read statistics a typical Polish car whose last road is to a scrapyard, ends it useful life due to damage done by rust so such extent that a vehicle is no longer roadworthy and does not pass the MOT. Factory protection of bodywork is decent, but when it comes to the "invisible" chassis, this is where savings in designing cars not built to last are made. Polish road clearance winter practices only speed up the pace in which rust wreaks havoc to cars' undersides. Amounts of salt poured on roads do not correspond with depth of snow cover on roads. As a driver I would prefer to see the snow mechanically removed, as it is done in northern Scandinavia and use of salt to be constrained to ice or freezing rain which are a factual threat to traffic participants.

To make a vehicle long-lasting, a separate anti-corrosion layer ought to be put on its undercarriage soon after driving out of a showroom gate. As this costs some money, Octavia, formally not mine, has not had it done, but as I have found out, after 3 years first spots of rust might still be cracked down on and the protective cover still can be applied (albeit the operation will be more expensive).

By the time it happens, but afterwards too, an undercarriage wash after winter is a fix. To do it properly, a vehicle needs to be lifted on a car jack and washed with dedicated chemicals and then flushed. I found only one car wash in Warsaw which does it well, but comparing how dirty the undercarriage was ahead of the wash and how clean it was after, I do not regret any of one hundred seventy nine zlotys spent on it (and some twenty zlotys forked out for petrol to the other end of Warsaw and back).

I hope those treatments will help Octavia be a durable car to keep me company for some two decades. I realise driving will get more expensive with petrol prices going inevitably up, but on the other hand, I drive it sparingly and the car is amazingly frugal beyond town. For the record, between my last long-distance journeys, i.e. from 4 March to 19 April I drove merely 337 kilometres. On 21 April on its way back from a workshops somewhere in Dolny Śląsk, the odometer hit 20,000 kilometres. Fuel consumption with 4 persons (3 passengers and me) on board and their luggage with 120 km/h on tempomat: 5.8 litres per 100 kilometres. No SUV nor a crossover, by dint if their weight and dimension, could boast of such low appetite for petrol on a motorway!