Koch Chemie Green Star All Purpose Cleaner GS

Most detailers end up with a shelf of single-purpose cleaners because nothing dilutes wide enough to cover the actual range of jobs that come up. Green Star is Koch Chemie's answer to that — one concentrated alkaline APC with dilution ratios printed right on the label, so you match the ratio to the job instead of reaching for a different bottle. Pretreating soiled exterior panels, breaking down bug guts and road film, or getting a heavily soiled interior surface back to acceptable — all of it is well within what this one product handles.

It's made more for exterior use — a solid medium-strength option for pretreating soiled lower paint sections, as a mild wheel and tire cleaner, and for working wheel arches. Like Koch Chemie's other APCs, it carries corrosion inhibitors, so you get high material compatibility on sensitive components like anodized aluminum instead of an unformulated alkaline cleaner chewing on them and fully pulling color.

Interior use is more limited, but it's not nothing — spray-and-wipe on door card kick panels and entryway plastics brings them back looking good, fast, and it handles mild to moderately soiled carpet ahead of extraction. It's also very reasonably priced for how many jobs it covers, which is really the whole case for keeping it within arm's reach at all times.