When the winter has finally decided to disappear for another year, you’ll probably be faced with a car that’s completely caked in mud and grime and be looking for some good car cleaning products. If you haven’t been keeping on top of keeping your car clean (we don’t blame you) then it can soon appear that a regular wash won’t be enough to keep everything at bay.
For such occasions, a stronger shampoo is probably a better idea to really cut through the extra grime and give your car a deep wash. One such example is the new Decon Shampoo from Autobrite Direct, a stronger (but still pH-balanced) car shampoo that’s designed to clean away big buildups of grime but without eating away at any paint protection.
Armed with nothing more than the essentials and with no pressure washer to rely on, Decon Shampoo would need to seriously impress to clear the muck off this car.
Verdict: The best way to wash an exceptionally mucky car.
Score: 5/5
Autobrite Direct Decon Shampoo
Price: RRP £10 | VIEW OFFER
Pros
• Excellent cleaning abilities
• Eco-friendly formula
Cons
• Overkill on moderately dirty cars
What’s good?
As a car shampoo for shifting muck, nothing we can think of gets close to it for pure cleaning power. Adding only 50ml of shampoo to a 10-litre bucket of water created a powerful cleaning solution that easily cut through the mud and grease a winter-driven car. Lubrication was excellent thanks to the abundance of suds offered by the Decon Shampoo which means that there’s less chance of any scratches marring your paintwork as you clean with your awash mitt. Best of all, it dried with no streaking, a common leftover from stronger car shampoos.
Another big plus with the Decon Shampoo is the fact it works as more than just a shampoo. It effectively doubles as a pre-wash for soaking muck and dirt before you properly remove it with a wash mitt and shampoo. Applied via a pump sprayer and found it to be just as effective on road film as Autorbrite’s stand-alone Citrus pre-wash.
The final huge bonus to this shampoo is the biodegradable nature of this shampoo. The surfactants (the stuff that cleans the grime off the car) are nearly all organically formed and will break down naturally leaving behind no nasty chemicals. A huge bonus considering the sheer power of this shampoo.
What’s okay?
Decon Shampoo may be packed to the gills with surfactants that make cleaning a breeze, but that means there’s little room for anything else. In a world of ceramic-infused car shampoos and gloss agents to make your car look factory fresh, Decon Shampoo shuns all of this, offering no extra gloss, protection or silicone.
All this means that the core factor in how glossy your car ends up looking will depend almost entirely on the condition of your paintwork prior to cleaning it. While there will be a noticeable boost to the paintwork, the gloss offered won’t be the same as with a gloss-infused car shampoo.
Any negatives?
It’s a stronger car shampoo, designed for those times a regular shampoo won’t quite cut it, which is both a blessing and a curse. If your car regularly looks like it fell down a mineshaft and you go months without so much as hosing it down, Decon Shampoo will be the answer to your cleaning woes. If on the other hand, your car is meticulously cared for, treated with a fancy protective coating and you’re forever topping up the shine, then the Decon Shampoo simply isn’t the best choice for the job. It’ll be the automotive cleaning equivalent of buying a 4K TV and then just watching grainy VHS tapes on it, you won’t be getting your money’s worth.
Other items to consider:
CarPro Reset: Maintenance Shampoo, RRP £25.99
Gtechniq Auto W1 GWash, RRP £19.94
Turtle Wax Hybrid Solutions Pro Pure Wash, RRP £18
How we tested this product:
The Autobrite Direct Decon Shampoo was tested as a shampoo and pre-wash to clean grime off a daily-driven car. The test car was pre-treated with a citrus pre-wash before being washed with 50ml of product diluted in a 10-litre bucket of water.
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