Our '03 Forester XS has only about 12k miles on it, but during my recent Spring cleaning I found plain old brass polish did a better job cleaning grime off the alloy wheels than the bug/tar spray I tried first.
The raised white lettering on my stock Geolandar tires was dirty, but dishwashing soap and a toothbrush failed to make much improvement. The quick and dirty solution was to spray the lettering with bug/tar remover, scrub with a kitchen pot-scrubber, and wipe off with an old cotton sock.
Any comments, or other cheap ways to do these same jobs?