MY PASSION for cars has been forever,” said Andrew Reed, owner of A Brilliant Shine/Ceramic Pro, an automotive detailing studio in Carmel Valley. “I love going fast. I hate going slow. I talk fast, try to think fast, and I work fast when it’s safe to do so,” he professed. He said that all he ever wanted was to drive high-performance race cars and live in the world of automotive excellence.
To become a professional driver, however, requires relentless dedication to being the best. “Once you realize what racing is and what it takes to reach that level, it has to be 100 percent of what you think about and what you do,” he said. To attempt it demands total commitment and very little time for anything else — not to mention the staggering costs involved. Reed realized early on that the racing part of his dream would be a hobby, not a career.
He was born in Monterey in 1991 and moved to Palm Springs, where he completed his education through high school. He attended the NASCAR Technical Institute in North Carolina, focusing on engine-building and race car development. While there, he worked for a manufacturer of high-performance race car engines in the quality control department, where he sat for eight hours a day — with magnifying eyeglasses on — searching for ten-thou- sandths-of-an-inch defects in engine parts. The work gave him an eye for minute detail, a skill that has served him well. “I see things others can’t,” noted Reed.
Returning to Southern California, he started a detailing business out of the back of his truck and eventually migrated back to the Monterey Peninsula in 2015, expanding to a shop in Carmel Valley, where he added ceramic coating and paint protection film to his menu of services.
Brilliant Shine’s presence at the Pebble Beach Concourse d’Elegance is the result of incalculable hours of work. It’s also proof that if you do something well enough, recognition fol- lows — one car Reed’s crew detailed was a finalist for Best of Show last year, and they’ve worked on three Best of Class winners since 2018, when they started prepping autos for the big event.
“We have an 11-man team of seasoned detailing experts who are the very best at what they do. They’re my extended family,” said Reed. Most have been with him for 10 years, flying to Florida, Los Angeles and Arizona, where they got cars ready for auctions and worked at automobile shows in addition to owning their own detailing businesses and/or maintaining elite automobile collections.
Timing of the detail work for the Concours depends on the car’s arrival. “Last year, ‘our’ car — a 1930 Mercedes-Benz 710SS Special Roadster — arrived late. The team worked for 27 straight hours on site at Pebble Beach, resulting in over-exhaustion, over-caffeination, sunburned faces and weary eyes,” along with that near-win for Best in Show, said Reed.
This year, the experts apply their skills and experience to a 1956 Mercedes-Benz 300 and a 1938 Grand Mercedes-Benz 770 W07 Pullman, set to arrive from Germany and in contention for Best of Show. “The 770 is going to take forever to detail,” said Reed. “Every single piece of aluminum or chrome trim has to be polished. Each wheel has to be taken off and everything underneath cleaned and polished. The wheels might have to be repainted. The detailing goal has to be met with military precision.”
For Concours, the team will work only on those two cars. Each will be at the Carmel Valley detailing shop for intense three-day prepping. “Those days usually begin at 4 or 5 in the morning and almost always run to 19 hours. I probably sleep three hours a day during that part of the process. We bring them as close to perfection as humanly possible,” Reed explained.
Finally, all surfaces are brought to a mirror-like finish with the final — labor-intensive — machine-waxing and polishing. They’re then trailered to Pebble Beach for the start of the Tour d’Elegance, where the two Mercedes will join more than 100 other classic cars on the road trip down Highway 1 to Big Sur and back.
On their return, the cars will be re-washed in place at Pebble Beach. “We re-prep everything,” said Reed. “We re-dress the tires, go through the engine compartment one more time, make sure there’s no dust, dirt or oil leaks, then the cars are parked.” On Sunday morning, they make sure there’s no moisture on the paint.
There is nothing more prestigious than winning the Pebble Beach Concours, Reed said, “not only for the car’s owner but for the detailing team that played a significant role in bringing that about. “ The depth of the competition at the event is remarkable. “We take great pride in what we do there, but it’s not just the final look of the car that wins.”
Entries are judged on originality and authenticity, as well as elegance, and it doesn’t hurt if they’re ultra-rare, as with the 1938 armor-plated Mercedes 770 built for the president of Portugal — one of only seven ever made.
Reed gets emails during the year from owners who want to make sure he and his team are the ones touching their cars at the Concours. “During the event, we get introduced to their families. ‘This is our guy,’ they say, and I love that. I like the recognition more than the paycheck,” Reed added. “I especially appreciate dealing with people who have a global presence but can acknowledge someone as small as we are, working out of a 2,000-square-foot shop in Carmel Valley.”
And that small facility has been seeing a lot of action this week. Along with the two cars being worked on for the Sunday’s high-stakes competition, Reed and his team are occupied 24 hours a day detailing more than 200 vehicles for a number of auctions that are part of Car Week.
Although being a racing driver became a hobby for Reed, the second part of his life’s passion — living in the world of automotive excellence and “super-cool cars,” as he refers to them — seems to have been realized in spectacular fashion. He gets to apply his knowledge, skill and talent to some of the world’s most breathtaking examples of automotive excellence in design, engineering, historical significance, beauty and dollar value. And he gets to do it where he lives with his wife and two daughters, practically on the doorstep of the world’s most prestigious car show.