I wash 2 cars most weekends so am always looking ways of speeding it up, while still doing a good job. This section of the website is great for finding ways of slowing me down.
I spray the lower half of the car with Traffic Film Remover in a garden sprayer. While the car soaks, I set up the pressure washer and fill a bucket (+ grit guard) with car shampoo.
Pressure wash car. Put pressure washer away and attach garden hose gun, set to wide spay. I find this more effective for rinsing the shampoo off the car.
Using a white Megs microfiber mitt - start at the top of the car and wash down. Do the lower panels 1 at a time. Check the mitt for dirt. Reverse the mitt and use the clean side when necessary. When both sides of the mitt are dirty, put it against the outside of the bucket and use the garden hose gun to clean it. Ring out the water. I find this more effective than the 2 bucket method.
Leave the lowest 3 inches around the whole car to the very last. It is the dirtiest part and you don't want to be rubbing a dirty mitt over any of the panels.
Use wheel mitt to wash the wheels.
That takes me 40 minutes per car. I don't think I could do it properly any faster.
The key to good results is drying the car. (This may be controversial.) If I'm in a hurry I will use a rubber blade to squeegee the cars. (I may have to spend some time in the naughty corner for that ) Though I much prefer to use about 12 sprays of aqua wax over the wet car. Then a microfiber towel to remove the water and a dry microfiber towel to buff the car. This does take a longer, but gives much better results.
When my Aqua Wax runs out I going to try some Gtechniq c2v3 as a drying aid.
Go directly to the naughty corner....or the 'detailing cooler' as it's called in here (it was good enough for Steve McQueen, lol). You will be there for some time so take something to amuse yourself.....
SRGTD has it right.....the absolute key to good car washing is the touchless stages of pre-washing. Valuable time invested at this point saves time later on. Snow foam followed by citrus pre wash stage gets rid of about 80% of the dirt, so the bucket wash is a quick easy affair. This presupposes decent protection which aids cleaning no end. Most importantly touchless washing gets the worst of the dirt off without mitt touching paint - equals less swirls. Drying is a very important bookending of the process as often the point at which swirls are inflicted. I'm not even going to dwell on the damage you are potentially doing to your paintwork with a blade.
But a very good drying towel used after an open ended hose rinse (far less water left than with a spray rinse) will dry your car far quicker than a squeegee blade and without any of the damage.
Washing wheels is a job best done first imo, so you are not dirtying already cleaned paintwork with what is the dirtiest part of the car, the wheels.
40 mins is good going. I can turn a car around in 45 if pushed but I'd rather take a bit more time.
What is your priority? A clean paintwork preserved car or just a clean car. No right or wrong answer here as we all have our different priorities.
All good debate.