Which outdoor car cover is best?

Not a fan of covers.

Any wind and they will flap around and chaf your paint work.

If you must make sure its breathable. Non breathable ones will just keep your car nice and damp, doing more harm than not having one. Even if it is dry the temp changes through night and day will create some condensation.

 

If you like to keep your paint looking nice the only time a car cover should be used is after just washing and drying your car and you put a clean car cover on it while it is in your garage.

 

I have a storm shield plus cover from Specialised Covers and its brilliant. You fill the details in on their website and they hand make the cover for your vehicle.

Fits like a glove
Breathable
Tailored made
Secured with straps and doesn't budge in windy conditions


Never had any problems with scratches or dampness unless heavily rained all day but with being breathable just evaporates through the cover.

UK company so unsure if they post worldwide
Only downside is it takes 4 - 6 weeks to be made but well worth the wait!

 

California Car Cover (https://www.calcarcover.com/) has a very wide variety of car covers each has a brief description of the type of use for the different covers. But I have to agree with others that only use the cover when the car has just been washed. Also after you have been using the cover outside it is necessary to wash the cover or you are just putting a dirty car cover over your clean car. When you fold up the cover it is impossible to keep the dirty side from the clean side.

I park one of my cars outside but only use the cover for a couple of days while the car is still relatively clean. When the car gets dirty and I don't wash the car, I don't use the cover until I wash the car again. That way I keep the cover relatively clean and am not putting a dirty car cover on a clean car and damaging the paint.

Washing a car cover is a whole other deal, either setting it on a group of lawn chairs and hosing it off and air drying or taking it to a laundromat with large commercial washers and dryers. But it seems that the dryers get lint on the dried cover so I usually wash the cover myself and air dry it.

Also I generally take the cover off if it is going to rain and storm. The wind will usually blow the cover off and get it dirty or if you tie the cover down one end will get lose and flap and chafe the paint. I would rather have clean rain on the car than deal with the chaffing the paint or a wet cover, as the dirt seems to bleed through some materials and get on the car or if a thick material just becomes a giant sponge and difficult to dry out.

 

Autobody Armor by Coverking. (https://www.coverking.com/autobody-armor.html)

We used to sell these at Ricambi America, and they were absolutely the bees knees.

 

^ call and ask. One of the issues we had with them was actually along those lines.... they were really good at making covers and had tons of templates, but they were pretty bad at the I.T./B2B side of the equation.

Also, for outdoor use, I don't think it needs to be super snug or fit like a spandex thong. If they don't have the Cali T template, it's entirely possible the standard California cover would be sufficient.

 

I use this one for storing my cars in the winter:
https://www.carbag.com/

Yoiu do have to use a regular car cover on the car before zipping it up in this bag, otherwise like A348W said, you can mar the paint. It comes with 10 pounds of Silicon Desiccant to keep things dry.

 

Maybe so, but a lot of insurance companies REQUIRE covers (with locks) if you park the car outside overnight.