Product of the Year

Innovative microfibre cloth collaboration cleans up in 2020 by taking our top title

Autoglym InstaDry Price: £13.40 Contact: www.autoglym.com

LOOKING back over previous Product of the Year award-winners, we’ve favoured those that were innovative, tackling familiar problems in a new way, or ones designed for new tasks.

PURE’s Highway DAB radio adapter and Bridgestone’s DriveGuard universal run-flat tyre are good examples, as are CTEK’s pioneering battery chargers. We’ve also celebrated remarkable achievements, like Continental winning all three of our tyre tests in one year.

But our 2020 winner falls into the first of those categories, because it takes a unique approach to drying a car.

Unlike other microfibre solutions, which seem to be in a race to create the biggest, fluffiest towel for drying your car, Autoglym teamed up with Vileda to create the InstaDry, which is even thinner than a traditional chamois leather. It has a microfibre knitted base with a PVA coating, which makes it highly absorbent, but doesn’t hang on to trapped dirt, reducing the risk of damaging the car’s paintwork.

And that slim weave makes the InstaDry so easy to use. While monster microfibre rivals hoover up huge amounts of water, they also get very heavy and hard to move, control, and wring. They’re also best when dry, and leave a film when wet.

By contrast the Autoglym InstaDry is at its best when wet. It can’t hold as much water as the bigger towels, but it sucks up six times its own weight. Yes, it needs more frequent wringing, yet this is easy and quick to do, and is no strain on the hands and arms.

The InstaDry works brilliantly, and is a fine example of using existing tech in a unique way to solve an age-old problem. Another innovative Product of the Year.

“The InstaDry works brilliantly, and is a fine example of using existing tech to solve an age-old problem”