Dr. Wack "A1" A1 "Polster-/Alcantara Reiniger" (Pro) Textile Cleaner 400ml

A1 "Polster-/Alcantara Reiniger" pulls stains out of the pile without leaving rings

What is the A1 "Polster-/Alcantara Reiniger" (Pro)? An aerosol foam from Dr. Wack for fabric upholstery, velour, Alcantara, carpet, vinyl trim and the headliner that breaks stains loose inside the weave and takes odours apart instead of covering them up. Not meant for pigmented smooth leather, and not for liquid that has run all the way down into the seat foam.

A1 "Polster-/Alcantara Reiniger" (Pro) is a textile cleaner from Dr. Wack that comes out of a 400 ml can as a foam and lifts the dirt inside the pile instead of flushing it down into the seat. Alcantara is no special case borrowed from leather care here. It is a microfibre non-woven made of polyester and polyurethane, so textile, and it gets treated exactly that way.

The foam works with three building blocks at once. Anionic surfactants grab grease and skin flakes. Polycarboxylates hold the loosened dirt in suspension so it does not settle straight back in. And enzymes cut the protein residue from milk, coffee or blood into fragments no bacterium can do anything with. For you that means the smell goes because its source has been taken apart, not because a fragrance is lying over it.

How little water is involved comes out in one unremarkable line of the safety data sheet from Baar-Ebenhausen. Next to the heading pH value stands a single word: none. A pH value assumes a water-based solution, and there is none here, the actives travel in a mix of solvent and propellant. So the can itself brings almost no moisture with it. That comes from your towel. Which puts it in your hands.

• Test winner with 288 out of 300 points. In 2022 AUTO BILD and the KÜS set ten upholstery cleaners on eight standardised soilings in the lab, from coffee and cocoa through dressing and egg yolk to blood and an oil-and-soot mix. The Polster-/Alcantara Reiniger won with a grade of 1.1 and the tester's note that it leaves no stains behind. In 2025 the same thing happened at Taxi heute against five rivals.
• Odour out, not odour over the top. Dr. Wack names spilt milk as the hard case itself, and the stink does not come from the milk, it comes from what bacteria make of its protein. The enzymes in the foam take their food supply away. After up to 5 minutes of dwell time you pick up both with the towel, the stain and the cause behind it.
• Five material groups out of one can. Approved are fabric upholstery and velour, Alcantara, carpet and floor mats, door and side trim with vinyl covering, plus the headliner. The headliner in particular is more than a footnote. It is glued, and too much liquid loosens the adhesive before it loosens the stain. A foam that stays up on top is the only sensible format there.

Detailing1's tip from the shop: We get a lot of questions about stains that are back once everything has dried. Usually the cleaning was right and the drying was wrong. Under the cover sits a block of seat foam that stores moisture and hands it back upwards as it dries, along with whatever is still in it. The counter-move is on no label: at the end, lay a dry white cotton towel on the spot, weigh it down with a book and leave it there for 20 to 30 minutes.

The ring comes from the towel, not from the can

A water ring does not form while you spray, it forms while it dries, on the border between damp and dry, where the last of the moisture dumps the dirt it was carrying.

Any paper napkin with a coffee stain on it proves the point. The edge is darker than the middle, because as the liquid evaporates it runs outwards and drops everything it dissolved where it disappears last. The same thing happens in upholstery. So you wipe from the outer edge of the damp patch towards the middle, instead of leaving that edge as the last wet spot.

The run-up to that is short. Vacuum the loose stuff out so no sand gets rubbed into the weave. Shake the can hard. Spray the dirty area evenly and let it soak in for up to 5 minutes. Then work with a damp microfibre or terry towel and firm pressure, turning the towel several times and rinsing it out. A saturated towel has stopped cleaning, it is only moving dirt around.

At the end, wipe damp until no more foam forms, then go over it once dry. That step looks cosmetic and is not. Surfactants left in the weave are wetting agents, they pull in moisture and dust, and the spot then dirties up again faster than it did before. A flat, overlocked microfibre towel shears through the pile better than a high-pile one, which mostly just soaks the foam up.

Two things are on no label. A can that has stood out in the cold overnight sprays coarse and dripping wet, because the internal pressure drops with the temperature, so let it come up to room temperature first. And work with the doors open: whatever moisture you put in has to be able to get back out of the cabin.

What sits in the seat foam, the foam cleaner will not get out

The cleaner works in the pile and the top few millimetres of the weave, it goes no deeper, and whatever has run through into the seat foam stays there.

On fresh and part-dried stains this is still exactly where it lives. The eight test soilings at AUTO BILD were the everyday programme: coffee, cocoa, dressing, egg yolk, porridge with chocolate, plus blood and an oil-and-soot mix. The testers recorded that no stain was left behind once everything had dried.

That testing ran in a lab on standardised panels, though, and not on a seat bolster with six years of skin grease in it. If you are hunting for real-world reports, know the difference: a grade tells you how well the chemistry works under identical conditions. How many passes your seat needs, it does not tell you.

The first limit is volume. The cup of coffee that went right down into the cushion is sitting in the foam core, and the trade calls its route back to the surface wicking. The only thing that helps there is spray extraction, a wet vac that puts water in and pulls it straight back out in the same pass. Stain means can. Soaked through means wet vac.

The second limit is the material. This foam has no business on pigmented smooth leather, because leather gets cleaned through its top coat, with little moisture and without the firm pressure Dr. Wack explicitly asks for here. The third limit the testers name themselves: the dwell time is long for an aerosol cleaner. If you want a floor mat done in two minutes, you have picked the wrong product.

On a full interior the maths tips over as well. Four seats, door cards and floor mats in one go are the wrong job for a 400 ml can. Then a cleaner concentrate for textile and Alcantara is the more sensible pick, because you dilute it and get many times the working solution out of the same bottle size. In that same AUTO BILD test it was this concentrate that took the value-for-money win, while the test win went to the can.

Alcantara asks for cleaning more often than leather, not less

Alcantara never sits on the boot bulkhead in a car, it sits on the surfaces your hands touch most: seat bolsters, steering wheel rim, gear surround, centre console, and on sports models the headliner.

Leather has a closed top coat, so skin grease stays on top of it and comes away with a damp cloth. The pile of a microfibre non-woven is open. Grease runs down between the fibres, sticks them together and lays them flat against the surface. The light then comes back in one direction instead of scattering, and the spot picks up that familiar greasy sheen.

That is also where the colour-refreshing effect Dr. Wack talks about sits. No dye is being added. The cleaner takes the grease out from between the fibres, brushing lifts the pile back up and it scatters the light like it did on day one. The colour was never gone, it was lying flat. So once everything is properly dry, brush the pile through in one direction with a soft brush.

One caveat belongs with that. Sheen from grease comes off, sheen from fibres crushed flat does not. Scrub back and forth soaking wet and at full force and you felt the pile mechanically, and no cleaner brings that back. That is why the manufacturer says pressure and not speed: short, directed strokes with weight behind them, no circles.

If you only want to keep floor mats and the boot carpet clean, a simpler textile cleaner gets you just as far. The extra you pay for this can pays off on Alcantara, light velour and the headliner, not on black needle felt in the footwell.

The last point belongs to drying, because that is where the most expensive mistake happens. A seat that is damp in the evening and stands overnight in a closed car smells musty two days later. So exactly the thing you bought the product to deal with.

Put the upholstery job on a day when the car can stand open for a few hours afterwards, and only put the floor mats back once they are dry through. Laid back in damp, the mat dries on top and keeps the carpet underneath wet for days. That is the source of the classic old-car smell, which most people pin on the year of manufacture rather than on the last clean.

Using the A1 "Polster-/Alcantara Reiniger" (Pro)

From dry pile to a seat that is dry through

Vacuum thoroughly first, including the seams and under the seat edge. Loose sand that gets between towel and weave while you wipe works like a fine abrasive. Then shake the can hard and spray the dirty area evenly, from about 20 cm away and not just on the stain itself.

Let it soak in for up to 5 minutes. Longer gains you nothing, because the foam collapses in that time and the surfactants have done their job. Then work with a damp microfibre or terry towel and firm pressure. Turn the towel several times and rinse it out in between, or you are only pushing the loosened dirt somewhere else.

Then wipe from the outer edge of the damp patch towards the middle until no more foam forms, and go over it once with a dry side of the towel. For that last pass a flat microfibre towel works better than a high-pile one, because it takes the moisture up instead of holding it in its own pile.

Let the area dry through completely, with the doors open and without putting the floor mats back in. Only once everything is dry do you brush the pile up in one direction with a soft brush. That last move decides whether the cleaned spot reads as a panel or as a patch.

Notes: On delicate or light colours, test on a hidden spot first, under the seat for example. Work sparingly on the headliner, the covering is glued and does not take wet. On pigmented smooth leather this cleaner is out of place, the mechanics do not suit it. Once liquid has run into the seat foam, only spray extraction with a wet vac helps. Store the can cool and dry, not above 50 °C and not in direct sun. It should be at room temperature before you spray, or the spray pattern goes coarse and the area gets wetter than it needs to be.