Waterproof Car Covers

Car covers help protect cars from the elements that can damage paint and interior upholstery. The sun is often the primary concern since harmful UVA rays can dull the paint, turning a red car that once popped with color into a just a regular old red car. The sun is also known to fade the dashboard and your nice leather seats.

The traditional way to prevent this type of damage is to place a car cover on a vehicle. This can work very well in sunny, dry areas like the American Southwest (Arizona, New Mexico, Southern California) but it can cause another problem in areas that get a significant amount of precipitation. The problem with rain and snow can be two fold. The first is that some snow and rain could cause small scratches on the body of vehicle and scratched can cause the paint to have a dull finish. This is something that should be avoided at all costs and is something that most normal car covers are going to be able to do for you.

But the most damaging thing that wet regions can do to a car, especially if it is under a car cover, is create a breading ground for mold and mildew directly on the body of your car. This is gross and can be very damaging to the paint of your car and truck.

Mold thrives in damp, warm conditions. Car covers can create the perfect conditions for mold growing without even knowing it. The way that this happens is that your car gets hit by a bout of summer showers while it is under the car cover. The cover gets pretty damp, but when the sun begins to shine you think that everything is going to be okay because the sun will dry up all the moisture in the cover.

This assumption is essentially true, the sun will come out and most of the moisture in the cover and on top of the cover will evaporate away. But the real problem comes with the liquid trapped under the cover. Instead of getting heated by the sun an evaporating in the air it gets trapped. The heating provided by the sun speeds up the molding process until you have a nice growth of mold on the underside of your car cover and on your paint job as well.

In order to address this problem the car cover manufacturers have come up with three different solutions to this problem.  That are to create breathable car covers, water-resistant car covers, and waterproof car covers.

• Breathable Car Covers -  A breathable car cover is one where the covering is significantly permeable to air.  This will allow water trapped underneath the air cover to have sufficient exposure to circulating air so that it will evaporate over time.  Most car covers these days will be breathable, but that does not necessarily mean that they will prevent molding 100% of the time, especially when the air is particularly humid on its own.
  
• Water-Resistant Car Covers - Water-resistant covers generally have a very high chance of stopping water from seeping through the cover and onto your vehicle.  The main part of a cover that is prone to seepage are the seems of the cover.  Many water resistant covers break down at this point in terms of their water protection.  Most car covers of this type are going to be breathable as well.
  
• Waterproof Car Covers - Waterproof car covers claim to be 100% waterproof.  They use a special method at the to make the seems of the cover (called ultrasonically welded seams) that helps ensure that no water can penetrate this problem area for other covers.  These are generally breathable as well, but by being 100% waterproof they don't really need it unless high humidity or undercarriage splash up is going to be a problem.
  

Whether or not you need to buy a waterproof car cover is mainly going to be based upon what type of element exposure your car endures on a daily basis.  If you really only need sun protection then I recommend that you find another cover that will maximize the amount of UV protection that your car is going to receive.  Waterproof covers tend to lack some of the pure sun protection that other covers can provide.

But if you are in a region where there is a lot of percipitation that you need to find protection form then you simply cannot go wrong with getting the best in waterproof technology.  The small invest that a quality car cover costs will be nothing in comparision to the amount of money that you will save since you won't have to go the paint shop to get your car touched up.  Both your interior and exterior will benefit extensively from a waterproof car cover.