Bug cleaners

The battle of the bugs has begun – and if you want to stand a chance of winning, you need a specialist product in your armoury. As summer arrives, even a short journey can leave your paintwork and windscreen splattered with insects.

What’s more, cleaning the critters off your motor can be a tough task because they take serious elbow grease to shift. Try tackling them with ordinary car shampoo and you’re in for a long haul, especially if they’ve been baked on by the sun.

Luckily, car care firms are increasingly making products specifically for tackling bugs. Most are spray-on solutions, but you’ll find wipes and aerosols, too. Some can address other paintwork problems, such as road tar and bird lime. But which one is best?

Verdict

In this relatively newcar-cleaning field, the Turtle Wax Platinum offering certainly stood out. With super bug dissolving properties and the abilityto leave the panel with a wax-like finish, it swept away our Best Buy title. Second place went to Meguiar’s Gold Class cleaner, which required a little more effort than the winner, but produced similar results. In third place were the handy Turtle Wax Bug and Tar Remover Wipes.