Recent progress concerning experimental and numerical methods for practical investigations of vehicle soiling are reviewed in this paper. Wind tunnel tests and available measurement techniques are analyzed and compared with respect to their possible applications and to the results they may deliver. Different computational models for liquid films generated by spray impingement on vehicle surfaces are then considered. Models relying either on a dispersed or on a continuous approach are compared, resulting advantages and shortcomings are discussed. It is finally shown that, in spite of considerable progress during the last years, substantial work remains to be done in order to capture the complexity of real film flow dynamics for an accurate representation of wetting processes, film separation and break-up interacting with turbulent flows. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.