Europe's First Automatic Car Wash

About the photo

They were at the cradle of automatic car washing: The Germans Gebhard Weigele and Johann Sulzberger with their company WESUMAT Autowaschanlagen. In 1962, Weigele and Sulzberger applied the patent for the "Wesumat 1". This system was presented to the world as the first automatic car wash in Augsburg. With this system they laid the foundation for the current car wash industry.

The first installation looked a bit different from the current modern installations. It was a two-brush system that simply revolved around the vehicle to be washed.

How did they come up with the idea? Gebhard Weigele and Johann Sulzberger were architects. While visiting contruction sites, their cars would get dirty.

The idea of an automated car wash came into the minds of the two gentlemen, but the road leading there was not an easy one. The first attempts to "shave" the cars clean with sawdust or cork went bad. The sawdust absorbed the water, cork dust reached into the interior of the car through the ventilation and eventually into the driver's eyes.

Weigele, who lived in Täfertingen near Augsburg, died in 2017 at the age of 86. In 1993, Weigele received the Federal Cross of Merit for his invention of the washing system. He is displayed on the picture on the left.

In the year 2000, California Kleindienst and Wesumat Holding AG merged into WashTec AG.