Vehicles
Almost every swirl mark on a domestic car was put there by a wash, not by the road. The order matters more than the equipment.
The equipment is secondary. This is the order.
Wheel grit is the coarsest thing on the car and the most damaging if it migrates. Separate brush, separate bucket, done before anything else.
A fan jet at a comfortable distance, never a rotary nozzle. The purpose is to remove loose grit before contact, not to clean.
Thick foam that clings for a few minutes softens what remains. Foam that slides off in thirty seconds looks impressive and does nothing.
Two buckets, a clean mitt, straight lines rather than circles, and never a mitt that has been dropped. A water-fed brush is fine on the body provided it has not been used on the wheels — grit trapped in bristles and dragged across a bonnet is the single most common cause of swirl marks.
130 bar · 420 l/h · 30 m²/h · 5.7 kg
The first Kärcher that publishes its flow rate — and the number that tells you what the machine will actually do.
Best for: A terrace, a drive and a car, cleaned two or three times a year, where the K 3 would need too many passes
≈ 220 €
145 bar · 500 l/h · 40 m²/h · 6.3 kg
Five hundred litres an hour and a fixed handle: the point in the range where the machine stops being carried and starts being wheeled.
Best for: A long drive, a large terrace or several vehicles — where flow rate, not pressure, sets the finishing time
≈ 250 €
140 bar · 465 l/h · 40 m²/h · 1 800 W
The machine in this group that publishes every figure it should — pressure, flow, area and power — and lets you turn the pressure down.
Best for: Mixed jobs — a car one weekend and a terrace the next — where being able to lower the pressure matters
≈ £195 / 165 €
120 bar · Foam Jet nozzle · T 1 patio cleaner included
The entry Kärcher, sold as a bundle with a patio head — which is the part that decides whether the machine gets used.
Best for: A small courtyard, garden furniture and bikes, where the machine is used a few times a season
≈ 150 €
At a sensible distance and with a fan jet, yes. Held close, or with a rotary nozzle, no — and never on a stone chip or a lifting lacquer edge, where the water gets underneath. Machines with adjustable pressure make this easier to get right, which is the practical argument for the Nilfisk Core here.
It is the accessory that does most for the paint, because foam clinging for a few minutes softens grit before anything touches the surface. A 3-in-1 wash brush is quicker and makes thinner foam. Either beats going straight in with a sponge.
Pressure washers and floor washers swing by a hundred euros or more across the year, and the biggest "discounts" often land at prices the same model sold for six weeks earlier. UniverTrack tracks the real price history across retailers, spots fake reductions, and alerts you when it is genuinely the moment to buy.
