Meguiar's Ultimate Wash & Wax Anywhere Test.

When your 9 year old cheekily writes "Clean Me Please" in the dirt on the back of the family wagon you know it's time to clean things up.

What better than to use the opportunity to test the NEW Meguiar's Ultimate Wash & Wax Anywhere car wash that I've had sitting for a week or so just begging for me to have a play and see how it goes.

Mike from Meguiars USA demonstrates it's use in the video below and he explains the product and how best to use it better than I can so I'll let you watch him for a few minutes and then I'll get on with my experience.

Unfortunately the test subject is a silver Ford Territory and because of it's colour it doesn't show the dirt as well in photo's as we'd like but it was actually pretty dirty without being so grimy that it would need to be given a thorough 2 bucket wash.  I thought it really was an ideal candidate for this sort of car care product.

 

I equipped myself with a couple of new microfibre towels to get a good idea of just how much cleaning was actually going on and in particular how much dirt residue was left behind during the buffing/drying wipe over with the second towel and I set to work.



With a fairly generous spray across sections of the front end, particulary at the front of the bonnet and on the bumper where there were quite a few bug splatters and other various 'more dirty' bits I quickly realised that the product makes quick work of the grime and that it does seem to loosen and emulsify the dirt in such a way that it softens it and allows it to absorb into the microfibre rather than get pushed along by the leading edge of the wipe cloth. This is something I'd been worried about because the last thing we need with a product like this is to create scratches that we have to remove later because we're pushing grimy particles around the paintwork..

As you can see after wiping the front end of the car ther's a lot of dirt absorbed into the cloth already.  At this point, different parts of the cloth were still quite clean and dry so I was able to work with just the one towel initially.  Wiping with one 1/4 then turning over and inside out to buff/dry.

A couple of 1/2 and 1/2 shots show the difference that it makes and the nice fresh waxed look that it leaves.

I was making what I felt was quite good time around the vehicle; Normally I'd have started at the top (least dirty area) and worked my way down the windows etc... before going around the vehicle  but this time I was so eager to see some results that"d jumped right into the front. 

I was quite impressed on the plastics,  the product seemed to penetrate deep enough to do quite a good job of cleaning the textured areas that often trap dust residues, particulary if you are used to using a detailer spray for quick wipe overs and the dry result seemed to leave a (slightly) enriched darker look to the plastics as well.   I don't want to exaggerate the look on the plastics but I did think that this would be an area where I would have been able to clearly see if it was going to let me down as a proper cleaner.

As you can see by the time I got around to the back of the car my cloth was starting to get pretty dirty, the inside folds weren't to bad though and the cloth was actually quite wet by now so I was finding that I was needing to spray less product on the panel but still getting a nice clean with plenty of lubricity during the wiping process.

It's worth noting that the instructions clearly state that it is not for use on Matte or Satin Finishes but I succummed to temptation and used it on the matte Black stripes anyway and there seemed to be no problem.  It certainly didn't damage them and it cleaned them nicely but I wouldn't recommend taking my experience and using it as the basis for cleaning down your factory Matte finished BMW M3 or anything like that with the product just in case.

Getting to the end of the clean and the cloth's are both quite dirty, I was actually surprised at how long I felt I was able to use the primary cloth before it got to a point that it felt too dirty to use and I actually managed to get the inital pass over most of the car with it while the 2nd towel was mostly used for buffing and drying the panels.  You can see from the photo that most of the dirt actually does get absorbed and that there's not a lot left on the panel to be picked up by the 2nd towel which I think really says somethng about the way that Meguiar's has developed the product.

I don't think it used a rediculous ammount of product either, the bottle says that it should do 3-4 cars, I was quite generous with the amount I sprayed on the car - partly because the guys at work say I'm scottish and I wanted to prove them wrong but also to try and guage the best ammount to use without wasting it.  The Territory is quite a big vehicle and I'm sure I could easily get 4 cleans such as this out of a bottle.  Smaller cars would be looking at more like 5-6 cleans from a bottle I reckon.

The end result was very good, I'd have to say that I feel it provided good really clean, probably better than I'd expected as it was quite effective around bugs and things that are always quite stubborn and that it did so in a great timeframe.  When you add in the fact that the car is left dry and with a finish that actually does have some of that 'fresh waxed' feel to it it's an added bonus particularly if you consider that this wash (including stopping to shoot a few photo's) took about 50 minutes from start to finish and that's including cleaning inside door jambs + dressing tyres and mudflaps.  Thats not too bad considering that to wash, dry, quick wax and then dress rubbers would normally take me an hour and a 1/2 or so to do to the same finish.

At about $37 dollars for a trigger bottle, I'd say that Meguiars Ultimate Wash & Wax Anywhere is a great product, it achieves a great result with a minimum of fuss or mess and I believe it would be an ideal product for someone with limited time or limited access to regular washing facilities and perhaps it's the perfect product for use when you've just rocked up to your club event but it rained enroute and you'd love to be able to give it a quick wash again before people see the dirt. Assuming that there's 4 washes to a bottle you get a much better result for your $9 that you ever will through a car wash.

Meguiars Ultimate Wash & Wax Anywhere has only just arrived in NZ, it's so new that it's only just starting to hit the shelves so if you would like to get your hands on some please let me know by flicking us an email to team@finaltouch.co.nz and we'll get some on it's way to you.  We'll get it up in the online store at http://www.finaltouch.co.nz/ ASAP for you as well.