Carrollton’s Pat Morvatz turns lifelong passion into thriving detailing business

Pat Morvatz has spent pretty much his entire adult life making cars look new again, a habit that began as a teenager washing his and his parents’ cars and grew into a decades-long side business that keeps him busy most nights. 

“I started out with my own cars and my parents’ cars, then other members of the family needed cars washed, and people I went to school with started asking,” Morvatz said. “It just kind of kept getting bigger and bigger.”

He officially began detailing in 1985 and soon added rustproofing after experimenting with farm equipment. “Farmers used to grease up their machinery before winter. I thought, well, there’s a need for this with cars,” he said.

Today his one-man shop, Morvatz Detailing in Carrollton, handles everything from sedans to motorcycles, dump trucks and tractors.

Despite running the shop, Morvatz has never left his day job at Fusion Ceramics, where he’s worked 38 years. He often works evenings until midnight and most Saturdays. “This is my full-time, part-time, full-time second job,” he said. Sundays are now his only day off.

Inside the shop, Morvatz offers full interior and exterior detailing. He starts inside: vacuuming, shampooing, stain extraction and crevice cleaning, then glass and a silicone-based protectant. “We don’t use Armor All, but the idea’s the same — it helps with UV and heat,” he said. 

Outside he washes, removes bugs, clay-bars the paint and finishes with wax. While many shops promote ceramic coatings, Morvatz leaves that to others. “I’ll send ceramic jobs to those guys, and they send me undercoating work,” he said.

One of his specialties is rust prevention using WoolWax, a lanolin-based coating developed for Navy submarines. “It goes on about the thickness of latex paint,” Morvatz said. “It never dries — it’s like leaving a stick of butter on the counter. It just keeps creeping and sealing so air and water can’t get to the steel.” Most reapply every two years.

Morvatz said pet hair remains the hardest part of detailing, and it’s a bigger problem than most customers realize. “You get a car full of pet hair, and there are hours involved,” he said. “It’s like it’s threaded in there.” He uses specialty brushes, high-powered vacuums and lots of patience to free embedded fur. Sometimes, he said, the work adds several hours to what would otherwise be a routine cleaning. “People think you can just vacuum it up. You can’t, it’s stubborn. That’s probably the toughest thing I run into.”

Sun damage and long-neglected interiors can also be tough to reverse. His advice: clean and protect regularly. “Our suns are a lot hotter anymore. Dirt bakes into the paint and interiors. Basic maintenance is cheaper than paint correction later,” he said.

“The biggest thing I like to hear is when a customer picks up their car and says, ‘Man, this looks better than when I bought it,’” Morvatz said. Word of mouth keeps him busy, and he does steady work for three local dealerships when personal detailing slows.

Away from work, cars have always been his passion. He built and showed his own vehicles and spent about 25 years drag racing in NHRA Division 5 events. “I’ve always had a love for cars,” he said. “I’m a Chevrolet guy. I like trucks, Camaros, Novas and the old stuff.”

Now in his early 60s, Morvatz hopes to retire from Fusion Ceramics within a few years and run the shop full time. “I pray my health stays good. This is what I love to do,” he said. “When someone tells me their car looks better than new, that’s what keeps me going.”