I know VW did this to protect the cars from the sea voyage. But this applied to the entire car.

In 1971 I took a guy to pick up his new Super Beetle. One rear fender looked different. As it turns out the dealership was moving the car around the yard and dented that fender. They replaced it with one from another car. But no one washed off the cosmoline (?)

So they took it back to make-ready and cleaned it up. They threw in a set of floor mats, those fiber mat types they used back then, to ease things over.