   Emzone Detailing Products, Bug & Tar Remover, Foaming Tire Shine. Click image to enlarge |
Review by Justin Pritchard
Cars are stinky devices. They can, at any given time, be home to dried doggy window slobber, ketchup-impregnated fries from the epic food-fight your screaming offspring initiated last summer, spilled smoothies, toppled tea, capsized coffee, and that musty hockey bag that leaves its aroma behind even after it’s been removed to the garage.
Or, maybe you’re a smoker. If you are, the need to hack a dart in your car has probably left the inside of your climate control system coated with particulate and residue that leaves it smelling, to your non-smoking passengers, like a taxi cab. Or, maybe you store your ride for the winter in a musty, damp garage, like me – and re-enter it in the springtime to find it smells like a soggy towel that’s been sitting in the bottom of the laundry bin since Christmas.
So yes. Cars are stinky. And maybe I’ve been living under a rock, but I recently discovered a revolutionary new way in which one may deodorize one’s stinky car.
Bearing in mind that one can shampoo, scrub, protect, disinfect and otherwise spray, spritz and wipe without any hope of actually eliminating all offending odor-causing particles is a unique product I found from Emzone – a Canadian brand of car-cleaning supplies that’s been working with the professional side of the industry for years and is now breaking into the retail market.
The product lets you literally bomb the olfactory nastiness out of your car.
Here’s the premise. Get yourself some EMZONE Odor Out, start your engine, activate ‘recirculate’ and your AC, and place the metal canister full of magical wonder-fog on the front-seat floor. Then, push the seat forward, which encourages the climate control system to inhale the magical wonder fog. Pull the time-release trigger, shut the door, and come back in a few. The stink-stopping smoke is released into your cockpit, and it’s all a bit like a tear-gas grenade in a Michael Bay movie – though clouds of freshness gas are released from the canister instead, and smelly stink-particles hiding in your ride, not a roomful of baddies, are the victims.
Emzone’s miracle gas infiltrates the entire cabin of your ride. Plus, since you leave your air conditioner running, it’s pulled in through your entire climate control system. The cleanliness cloud contains chemicals that kill and neutralize mildew, mould and other nasty stuff that lives in your ducts. It neutralizes the olfactory evidence of your smoking activities. It gets under the seats, behind the panels and into the headliner, too.
Translation? Virtually everything in your car is exposed to the product. And you come back, a few minutes later, and smell nothing but delicious, crisp vanilla. I tried a treatment in the Viper after taking it out of storage in late May. Before, the cabin smelled musty, mildewy, a little like gasoline, and had a hint of cigarette smoke inside – since my friends sometimes smoke in my garage during winter get-togethers when it’s too cold outside. After the Odor Stop fumigation process, the only smell left behind reminded me of Dairy Queen soft serve. Slick stuff. There’s a spray bottle of Odor Stop ‘refresher’ you can use to help keep the cabin smelling nice between treatments, too.
And, if you don’t like the smell of vanilla ice cream, do like me: hang a scented cardboard pine-tree on the mirror, do a victory stretch, and head to the nearest patio chair for a grown-up beverage to bask in your own self-awesomeness.
Later, with a few samples of other products and some clean rags, I headed to the local Cruise Night to let some buddies try stuff out.
There was Emzone Window Cleaner, which like all window cleaner, cleans windows. The aerosol can is handy to use, the product is strong enough to slice through most hazy deposits, a little over-sprayed armor-all and even that dried-on doggy drool with ease. Plus, since it’s an automotive formulation, it doesn’t have any of the chemicals that could leave your window tint dried out and peeling like that fence you were supposed to paint four summers ago.
 Emzone Bug & Tar Remover. Click image to enlarge |
Emzone’s Leather Cleaner and Conditioner was up next. My buddy Cullens tried it out on his beloved Lincoln MKS’s seats, which are assaulted on a daily basis by stuff spilled by his two-year old son, who is a total clutz. Dried-in stains and other dirtiness melt away into the applicator rag, and you gently buff the remaining residue out of the seat, almost like you’d do with a car wax. And, like a car wax, a slick, smooth and glossier surface is left behind. Not only pleasing to the touch and slightly fruity smelling but in a manly sort of way, I wondered if the reduced friction between the seat and clothing upon entry and exit would contribute to a longer life from the leather.
The MKS had black leather seats. I have another buddy, Bocy, with a newer Focus fitted with white leather seat inserts that turned brown after about four days of real-life use. Same deal. Wipe the Emzone leather-cleaner in with a rag, and the product melts the discolouration out of the leather. Buff, smooth, and you’re done. Good as new!
The Emzone Bug and Tar remover product was another hit. In Sudbury, we have blackflies the size of mosquitoes, mosquitoes the size of small birds, and horseflies the size of cats. They make delightful noises when meeting a bumper at 110 km/h, but removing their sticky, dried-on guts isn’t delightful at all. This product works like any other similar solution I’ve used, but with one exception: it comes in an aerosol spray can. This means less of the product is wasted smearing all over an applicator rag and your writer’s hand before it gets to work. Spray it on, let it sit a half minute, and the gory insect wasteland splattered on your bumper wipes clean off. As your writer has seen with comparable products, larger insects, or those filled with particularly sticky stuff, may require a second spray and wipe, or wiping with something a little more abrasive.
  Emzone Foaming Tire Shine. Click image to enlarge |
There’s Emzone Foaming Tire Shine, too. My buddy Ian, who has a Mitsubishi Evolution with about 600 horsepower and a set of wheels and tires worth more than some cars, literally, had no idea such a product existed. Spray the frothy, bubbling foam out from the aerosol can onto the sidewalls, wait a few as it melts into the rubber, wipe off the excess, and you’ve got a glossy, deep shine that makes the tires look as lustrous as freshly-polished paint. It was like Ian had seen God. He could barely speak. I think he’s going to be a tire shine addict. Just don’t spray this stuff on in your driveway, as it’ll leave a silicone-based stain on the pavement that’s nearly impossible to remove. Park on the road, or your lawn, to avoid leaving a permanent mark.
Emzone’s products have their work cut out for them, since breaking into the mental radar of Canadian car-cleaning buffs will require them to stand out in the ever-flashy sea of competitor products on retailer shelves, upon which live an already-daunting selection of competing products shouting out for your hard-earned cash. Big players, including Mothers, Armor All and Turtle Wax have a strong presence here – though the Emzone brand is hoping that a few key attributes will help them move products from shelves.
First, it’s an entirely ‘Made in Canada’ brand – so there’s that warm fuzzy feeling that comes from buying a product that supports your local economy, jobs and the like. Second, Emzone has years of experience serving the professional market (garages, detail shops, etc), which should help drive consistently effective and high-quality products. Then, there’s the aspect that most of their stuff comes in handy aerosol cans, which are a bit nicer to use than squeeze-pump bottles and more precise in the spraying department.
Plus, since you’re not likely to pay more money than an established brand charges for a brand you’re not familiar with, Emzone will be offering that high-quality at a price similar to the competition. Ditto some innovative flare, like the stink-eliminating hand-grenade canister mentioned above.
If you’re interested in stocking your garage’s detailing product cabinet with some quality, decently-priced, made-in-Canada products, check out Emzone’s car-care line at your favourite independent auto parts store.
