No matter the season, keeping your car clean inside and out is essential if you want it to live a long and happy life. With these handy car-detailing products, your ride will be looking and smelling good as new in no time! We have a complete car cleaning products and detailing supplies to help you keep the interior and exterior of your car looking like new.
There are a ton of great car soaps on the market today, but it seems to be slim pickings when you’re looking for something that’s at least a little eco-friendly. This car shampoo from Green Clean Automotive uses plant-based surfactants and vegetable glycerin —rather than harsh solvents — to get your car shining again.
If water conservation is the biggest concern, a waterless car wash like this is a great way to clean your car without running the garden hose non-stop. That said, we only ever recommend this for a light wash, because sometimes a hose (or a pressure washer!) are the only way to remove caked-on dirt and other road gunk.
There are a ton of great car soaps on the market today, but it seems to be slim pickings when you’re looking for something that’s at least a little eco-friendly. This car shampoo from Green Clean Automotive uses plant-based surfactants and vegetable glycerin —rather than harsh solvents — to get your car shining again.
If water conservation is the biggest concern, a waterless car wash like this is a great way to clean your car without running the garden hose non-stop. That said, we only ever recommend this for a light wash, because sometimes a hose (or a pressure washer!) are the only way to remove caked-on dirt and other road gunk.
Caked-on tar and bugs that won’t scrub off with regular soap can make cleaning your car all sorts of unpleasant. The folks from Turtle Wax have designed this heavy-duty power foam cleaner specifically for stripping that grossness from your front bumper.
Once your car is clean, you may notice some faint scratches and swirls in the paint that you don’t particularly care for. If they are on the lighter side, this scratch remover from Meguiar’s can be used to lightly buff these marks out by hand, to return your paint to its natural glossy finish.
Another solid choice for scratch removal is this three-step kit from Scratch Pro. It includes three different compounds and three different buffing pads to work your scratches out, step-by-step. It’s still only going to work on light scratches, but it’s way better than leaving them alone entirely.
Now that your exterior is squeaky-clean and those pesky scratches are gone, it’s time for a good waxing to preserve your car’s paint finish. A pure wax would also work just fine, but using a cleaner wax can be useful if you accidentally missed cleaning a spot or two. That way you won’t have to start the waxing process all over again!
Nu Finish has been on the market for ages, and people who use it continue to swear by it. Touted as the “Once-A-Year Car Polish,” Nu Finish is the only wax-free option on the market, and is hugely popular in markets where snow, ice, and salt are a problem. Weather will wear down a traditional wax, whereas Nu Finish seems to last well through the winter months.
Working though washing, waxing, and buffing can be a real pain to do by hand. If there are multiple cars in the driveway or you simply subscribe to the mentality of “work smarter, not harder,” there’s nothing wrong with investing in a good orbital polisher. This kit from Chemical Guys includes the rig itself, as well as five variants of their hex pads and their three-stage polishing compounds — a great jumping-off point for keeping your car(s) in top shape.
In the case of some older cars, there’s nothing more annoying than shining up your paint job only to stare at foggy, yellowed headlight lenses. Recently, companies like 3M have come up with some great buffing pads made to attach to either a drill or orbital buffer that are meant to buff away that haze, and leave you with nice clear headlight lenses.
There are many manufacturers making tire-shine sprays, but for the most part they are a giant waste of time, unless you’re staying parked at a Show And Shine for a few hours on a sunny day. This tire glaze from ArmorAll doesn’t give your tires that super wet look, but unlike the other guys, it’s claimed to last through up to 100 car washes.