Meet Your Instructor

Mel Craig started detailing cars as far back as the early 1970’s helping his two older brothers who owned their own mobile detailing business. On weekends and summer breaks from elementary to Jr. High school, Mel’s brothers often enlisted him to clean wheels, vacuum the cars and do the little things they hated to do. By his high school years Mel was working weekends, holidays and his summer breaks detailing cars on his own with tremendous success.

Mel graduated High School in 1975 and enlisted in the US Army and spent his tour of duty at Fort Lewis Washington and Fort Wainwright Alaska. Upon his honorable discharge from the US Army, he started his car care, auto detailing career as a full time, business venture and has been detailing cars ever since.

Back when there was almost nothing to buy in the arena of professional grade products, tools, and other detailing supplies this never stopped Mel from creating a very successful business serving most of San Diego County a Southern California territory.

Back then, there were no cell phones, no internet, no social media, and no real way of printing high end marketing pieces because of the expanse of offset printing. But again, this never played a part, nor did it stop Mel from creating an amazing and successful career in car care.

My brothers and I had a cassette player, telephone answering devise that we had to address each night after returning to the shop from a long day detailing cars. We built our businesses by meeting people every day and talking about our business and what we did. Back then we had to explain what auto detailing was, why it was important and why we charged so much money to detail a car.

With all these challenges and many more, we were able to grow our business and business ventures to a very profitable car care endeavor.

Back in 1999 Mel found a unique niche, with so many people asking him about how they could start a detailing business. So, Mel opened up, the very first of its kind, five day, auto detailing school, teaching the art of car care for anyone wanting to start a career in the auto detailing industry.

Since then, Mel has traveled the world speaking and training in the art of auto detailing and the automotive appearance industry. He has appeared on many TV shows to include Fox, Discovery, Velocity and most recently, Motor Trends hit TV Series, Wheel Dealers with Mike Brewer and Ant Anstead.

Mel has been printed in Hot Rod, Classic Car, Street Machine, and Modern Car Care magazines and published in many other books and magazines throughout the world.

Mel calls Huntington Beach his home and place of business. Huntington Beach is, the classic car capitol of America. There are more hot rods, classic, vintage, and collector cars then any other city in America making Huntington Beach the place to be in the automotive appearance industry.

Over all these years Mel has trained thousands of students from all over the world. Many of his past students today have found massive success in the car care industry. Some of them have won “Detailer of The Year” created huge incomes, have won all kinds of awards, and have become professional trainers themselves.

One of the best things about Mel’s training, is the fact that, to this day, he is still detailing cars himself in his Huntington Beach, high end, paint correction and paint protection car care shop. And, once you make the decision to attend one of his many training programs, you’ll be trained in this very special facility.

Mel’s shop is not some, classroom, set up environment like you’ll find with other “So Called” professional training institutions. This is a real working shop, and all his students are trained on real customers cars and deal directly with the customers looking for the perfect finish with their personal and prized, award winning vehicles. This makes your training invaluable, legit and the real deal under real working conditions.

Once you complete any one of Mel’s training programs, you’ll receive your beautiful, leather bound, accredited certification. Your certification and graduation from these specialized training programs is something you, your family, friends and most importantly, your customers that will be proud to take advantage of the professional services you offer.

And don’t forget that yes, you are in business for yourself, but not by yourself. What does this mean to you? Mel and his team of professionals are packaged up right in your back pocket. His team is there to support you from the day you leave class until the day you need them most. And this ongoing support program is at no further cost or investment on your part! Your success is our success and were here to help you succeed in the automotive appearance industry.

Thanks for checking out our training programs and don’t hesitate to give us a call or send us an email with any questions you may have.