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Repeated Snowstorms Leave Cars Filthy Across Area

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- If it seems as if people are checking out your car a lot more often these days, you are probably right – but perhaps not for the reason you think.

As CBS 2's Scott Rapoport reported Tuesday, chances are the attention is because your car is filthy-dirty because of all the snow that has been falling.

You may find the snow pretty, fluffy and white in the beginning. But after constant snowstorms, endless ice and plodding plowing make for cars that are about as attractive as the Abominable Snowman. Filthy, black layers of dirt descend like a plague on the cars of Gotham.

And keeping cars clean is "impossible," said John Reitwiesner of the Upper West Side.

Everywhere you look, you will find a parade of schmutz on wheels, grimey grilles, and dirty doors. Mirrors are left obscured by icy formations of glop.

Rapoport set up to find the dirtiest car around, and there were many candidates.

One car on the West Side was parked behind a pile of snow that nearly reached the top of the wheels, with an old pizza box littered on top of the pile of gray, repulsive ice.

A school bus in Washington Heights was in desperate need of a visit to the carwash, and one Jeep Grand Cherokee was covered in a layer of grime that came off onto Rapoport's fingers like partially-dried paint.

And the ultimate winner was a Volkswagen that appeared to be dark gray, but had been rendered a pockmarked shade of gray and white thanks to days of road salt and filth.

CBS 2 wanted to buy the owners a carwash job, but the owners were nowhere to be found.

So CBS 2 instead hit the Westside Highway Car Wash, 638 W. 47th St., and paid to clean a taxicab that looked only vaguely yellow with all the grime it had accumulated.

The taxi driver, Irene, said it was not her fault that the car was dirty. She said it got that way because of the last driver who drove it.

But she was grateful, and the cab will now be clean – at least until the next snowstorm on Thursday.

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