Rain-X Windshield Washer Fluid

Back in my motorhead days, when I read Road and Track and Car and Driver every month, I would always see the ads for Rain-X, the “Original Glass Treatment,” in the little yellow plastic bottle. The Invisible Windshield Wiper. Did it work? One of my friends, a mechanical engineer, recommended it, saying, “You can pass a truck at 70 miles per hour in the pouring rain and still see perfectly.” He was right; it made a huge difference. The water drops would bead up and roll off the windshield like little drops of mercury. It made driving in the rain much less stressful. In fact, the faster you drove, the better it worked. You could put the wipers on the intermittent setting and they would lazily flick the beads away every so often and leave the windshield perfectly clear. There was a catch, of course: every 30 days you would have to reapply it. Clean the windshield thoroughly, apply the Rain-X, let it dry to a haze, then buff it out like wax. Worked so very well the first few days that you tried not to use the wipers, the washer fluid, or God forbid, let an overzealous service station jockey clean “stuff” off your windshield. All that would only hasten the day when you would have to do all that work again. Now I don’t don’t do any of that anymore, I just fill the fluid reservoir with Rain-X De-Icer Fluid and use the wipers and washers as much as I want. All of the pros and none of the cons.

Affordability: 9                  Luxury: 9 (I really like this stuff)

Available from Amazon or most any auto parts store