Portage Automotive

A testament to their meticulousness, the auto experts at Southland Auto Wash spent a decade developing their signature tire protectant and polish, Tire Blaze. Though they'd tried Armor All or angrily shouting at tires to scare grime away, they envisioned a mechanically applied tire dressing that would function something like hand cream. With the help of Qual Chem, they finally cracked the code. After a treatment, tires look newer, with a glossy, almost wet appearance and a deep-black hue. They also resist rubber breakdown, cracking, and damage from road detritus.

Tire Blaze is only one service at Southland Auto Wash's five locations, but its history reflects the company's devoted attention to detail and insistence on top-shelf car care. These values, along with the wash's extensive water-conservation projects, earned the sudsatorium a nod as Grand Rapids Magazine's Best Car Wash. This should come as no surprise since the family-owned company—now in its third generation of car washers—has been detailing cars on increasingly advanced automated lines since 1950.

The staff at AutoClean scours cars, boats, motorcycles, and RVs with an extensive slate of detailing services. They tend to both interiors and exteriors, shampooing carpets, cleaning vents, shining tires, and hand-waxing to bring paint to a shine. For rides in need of a small sprucing rather than an entire detailing service, they also offer their treatments a la carte.

Complete Auto Care, where ASE-certified technicians tend to busted rides and invite interested drivers to attend free Car Care Academies. A respect for the environment seasons each of the company's repair and maintenance services. Take the EcoPower oil change, for example, an option in Portland, Oregon shops that boasts recycled, twice-refined engine oil mixed with the distilled rage of Mother Nature.

Since its first facility hit the streets in 1926, Firestone has expanded to 2,200 locations nationwide, all of which offer the same service warranty options and stand as red-and-blue beacons to remind us that community programs such as Driver's Edge and Meals On Wheels deserve to be sponsored. Auto care wouldn't be complete without tires, and Firestone has plenty of those to offer, including Bridgestone run-flats that fend off the effects of a flat tire for 50 miles.

Auto Clinic's friendly, dedicated staff has kept cars on Michiana roads for more than three decades. Within their full-service NAPA AutoCare Center and Bosch-authorized service center, they treat all makes and models of foreign and domestic cars with maintenance and diagnostic services, such as oil changes and bumper-to-bumper inspections. For repairs, they draw from a vast inventory of more than 375,000 parts, 1,000 of which are the same novelty horn from The Dukes of Hazzard. NAPA's Peace of Mind warranty stands behind much of their handiwork, covering qualifying repairs and services for 12 months or 12,000 miles.

AutoRenew's vehicle revampers treat cars to makeovers with interior and exterior detailing and repair services. Technicians kick off multistep cleaning sessions by soaping up the car's hide by hand, sealing in its new resplendence with hand applications of carnauba wax that leave auto bodies sparkling. A hot-water extraction digs deep into carpet fibers to remove stains and impacted grime, and nitrogen turns dust lingering on all surfaces and crevices into freeze-dried ice cream. A bacteria-removal system helps quash odors from the source, and staffers treat and condition leather and scrub down windows to fashion smudge-free vistas.

AutoRenew also coats exteriors in a synthetic polymer sealant, whose chemical bond to body paint wards off signs of dirt and wear more effectively than traditional carnauba wax. Wet sanding techniques refresh headlights and fog lamps for brighter beams, and windshield repairs rein in small and medium chips lest they splinter into larger cracks.

The detail technicians at Great Lakes Chemical Services revivify rides with skills drawn from an in-house training program and more than a century of combined experience. To get autos looking their showroom best, the team restores exterior luster with paint sealant infused with nanotechnology, in which each individual molecule works in tandem with the next to seal the metal's pores and, like pointless water balloons, prevent moisture from ever causing harm. Technicians also touch up vehicular mishaps by erasing scratches and uncorking dents.