When you call Miracle Detail, you call Paul Dalton. There are no secretaries. There's no manager or head office.

The reason for this is simple. Paul is a perfectionist, and he cannot trust anyone else to detail a car with his care, skill or enthusiasm. As such, you can be sure of a personal service from Miracle, and an unrivalled standard of work. Would a regular detailer go to the bother of measuring your paintwork with an electronic paint depth gauge, before polishing it? Or treat the paintwork you can't see from the outside, like the door sills, with the same care and attention as the rest?

For many, the thought of spending well over £300 to detail a car seems faintly ridiculous. Automatic washes charge less than £10, and there are many products available from high street retailers that claim to shine your car to perfection.

The reality is that detailing a car takes time - between 6 and 8 hours in a typical case - and the finest products cannot be found at your local auto superstore.

Paul uses a limited edition Swiss wax which is £10,000 a pot, and is liberal with its application. He washes and cleanses the car, from the wheel arches to the windscreen. Then he'll add at least one deep, protective layer of carnauba wax - after having 're-levelled' the paintwork if it is scratched or contaminated.

What's more, after Paul has detailed your car, the wax finish resists dirt and pollution far more effectively than normal, as your paintwork is smoother. You can feel it for yourself with the back of your hand (or use your finger tips through a thin plastic wrapper, like a sandwich bag, if you're feeling professional). So washing your car between wax application (between 6-12 months, depending on mileage and storage factors) takes less time, and the results are spectacular.

So how good is the Miracle finish? Well, even professional bodyshops can sometimes fall short of Miracle's high standards. "They just don't spend enough time on the process," explains Paul. "It saddens me to say that I've had to refinish a £5k paint job because the customer was unhappy."

Modern luxury and performance cars can cost as much as a small flat or house, yet lose their value quickly if unloved or uncared for. And even the cared-for cars can lose their value if treated incorrectly. Every time a car is washed with a bucket and sponge, there is a risk that microscopic grains of dirt are being rubbed into the gleaming paintwork, causing swirl marks.

Paul safeguards your investment: regular treatments will preserve the quality of your car's paintwork, ensuring that depreciation is kept to a minimum when you come to sell it on. And costly resprays can be avoided, saving thousands of pounds (a respray on a Lamborghini Murcielago can cost up to £20k).

Plus there's nothing like a swirl free finish to make you fall in love with your car all over again.

To say Paul is passionate about detailing and paintwork correction would be an understatement. He started learning about paintwork about 14 years ago whilst working as a trainee at a bodyshop, and constantly pestered his more experienced colleagues for information. Then, when he moved on to a Vauxhall dealership, he detailed cars in the showroom ("You could always tell which ones I'd done," notes Paul) and part time as a hobby for one or two clients.

These days, Paul has a thriving business based around a loyal customer base all over the UK and Europe, and - thanks to extensive media coverage - is famous throughout the world. "It's great to get some recognition, but the media can be quite demanding and I have to put my clients first. Of course, I could take on staff like some of the larger detailing companies, but then I haven't met anyone as passionate about detailing as me. Standards would slip. Every car I detail is an advertisement for my business; every car has to be done by the Miracle."