Wheel cleaner mini test

If you let the brake dust and winter road grime stay on your wheels, it does much more than just leave your car looking dirty. The filth can damage your rims, and repairs can be expensive.

Specialist cleaners shift baked-on dirt, and the latest to arrive is HubiKote’s new Hubi Wheels. It claims to be extremely powerful, so we rated it against our current champ, Bilt-Hamber Auto Wheel, which has just got a new scent.

There were weeks of road dirt on our filthy wheel – as the left front alloy of a front-wheel-drive hatchback, it accumulated more brake dust and gutter grime than any other wheel on our test car.

We applied each product according to its instructions and assessed ease of use, before seeing which removed the most dirt. Value for money was the final factor in our test.

Hubi Wheels changes colour as it works, and removed a lot of dirt. But the Bilt-Hamber offered similar performance and better value, with a litre bottle to its rival’s 500ml. And the new smell masks the eggy odour that used to be our only gripe with the product.