The newly remodeled and refurbished car wash Five Star Auto Wash is now open for business. Co-owners Todd Perkins and Russ Green put more than $200,000 into the operation in an effort to help beautify the area and provide residents with a service on which they can depend.

When the owners of Five Star Auto Sales took over the car wash on Elm Street, across the street from Wal-Mart, their goal was to provide residents with a service they haven’t seen in some time.

Russ Green and Todd Perkins bought the dilapidated building at 210 E. Elm St., and, after spending approximately $200,000 in renovations and purchasing new equipment, they feel they now offer residents a service that will keep them coming back.

“We saw the need for something like this,” Perkins said. “We own the Five Star Auto dealership here in town, and we were looking to beautify this a little bit. Now, it functions correctly, and we feel it adds something to the community.”

Through the renovations of the building, the car wash now features an automatic wash that doesn’t have any physical scrub brushes or mats that will scratch cars or rip off antennas. Rather, the machine uses chemical properties of water, pressure and different types of soap and waxes to get the vehicles clean and looking their best.

Perkins said the automatic car wash competes with other standard car wash systems that use brushes and other cleaning materials to provide a seamless wash that won’t cause damage to the vehicle.

“That is one of the things that we wanted to get away from,” he said of physical scrubbing devices. “That is probably the biggest complaint we saw with other car washes — that it can damage the vehicles. That is why we went this route.”

The new automatic wash at the facility has four options, ranging in price from $7 to $12. With the top two options, customers get what is known as the “triple shine.” With the top option, customers can also take their vehicle through for a one-of-a-kind experience known as the hot lava wax.

“At night, it is like fluorescent orange,” Perkins said. “It looks like a sheet of lava going over your car. There’s only between five and 10 of these in the United States. We wanted to bring some technology that brought us into (2015).”

The automatic wash now also features two additional car dryers that, together, run at 60 horse power instead of 30, as it did before, to ensure that cars are dried evenly before customers drive them off the lot.

The wash also features a number of do-it-yourself washing stalls, which customers can use at little cost, in addition to vacuum stations that cost $1 to use.

Within the next few months, Perkins said he and Green will add a couple of self-service spot-shampooing stations, which customers will pay a small fee to use to further clean the inside of their vehicles. He said, as the business continues to grow, they hope add to the offerings.

“We started this as a supplemental business to help grow our business,” he said. “Now, as the town grows, we want to grow, too.”

The car wash is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, which has been a huge draw to customers, Perkins said. Each of the car wash stalls also has heated floors for the cold winter months, a feature kept from the original facility.

In the four months since the business has been open, more than 5,000 cars have used the facility, which Perkins said is pretty substantial for a new business.

“It definitely gets used now,” Perkins said. “On our busiest day, we washed 120 cars. On warmer days, cars will be lined up out to the street,”

Despite the early success, Perkins said they want to keep customers happy by continually providing a good service that people appreciate. He said they have received many compliments on the facility’s cleanliness, which will continue to be a priority at the business.

“We check on it about every three hours,” he said. “We are selling clean, so the place should be clean. We want to continue to update things and add new products.”

For more information, people can call Five Star Auto Sales at 541-567-2119.