Ankeny, IA Car Wash Market Analysis
Part of the Des Moines-West Des Moines, IA MSA.
Data updated · May 22, 2026
A read of Ankeny's car wash market built from 1,948 Google reviews across 9 locations. Format mix, operator rank, county breakdown, rating vs. income, aspect-level customer signals.
Snapshot
- Locations
- 9
- Chains
- 5
- lead: Oasis Car Wash (1)
- Avg rating
- 4.32★
- -0.09 vs MSA median
- Damage rate
- 3.8%
- 2.4× MSA norm
- Top format
- detail shop
- 44% of classified
Market Quality snapshot
- Population
- 70,542
- ACS 2023 5-year
- Households
- 27,493
- ACS 2023 5-year
- Residents per wash
- 7,838
- 4.1× the national MSA median — lighter supply
- Express tunnels per 10K households
- 1.1
- above ~1.0 — contested · classified sites
Key findings
- 9 car wash locations operated by 5 chains and 4 independents.
- Weighted Google rating 4.32★ across the market; structural concentration and format mix sit near US-market norms.
- Built from 1,948 Google reviews, 661 of them AI-extracted across 55 dimensions.
9 car wash locations in Ankeny, IA · dots colored by format · sized by review volume
Ankeny reads as a balanced car wash market — neither sharply consolidated nor unusually fragmented. 9 locations across 5 chains and 4 independents. Distinctive patterns show up below at the format and aspect levels.
Weighted rating 4.32★; damage 3.8%; membership-cancel friction 19.2%. Equipment reliability runs as the sharpest friction (-0.80). 1,948 Google reviews drive the analysis, 661 of them processed through the WashIndex LLM extractor.
See the best-rated car washes in Ankeny, IA
Ranked by Google review rating
About Ankeny, IA
How many car washes are in Ankeny, IA?
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What is the best-rated car wash in Ankeny, IA?
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Which car wash chains operate in Ankeny, IA?
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What is the median household income near Ankeny car washes?
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What is the average car wash rating in Ankeny, IA?
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What kinds of car washes does Ankeny have?
Format counts below split Ankeny's 9 car wash locations by operating concept. Each format serves a different customer occasion — express tunnels for throughput, full-service for staffed convenience, detail shops for hand-finished work — and the rating column lets you read whether each format is meeting its own expectations here.
Highest-rated format in this market: Detail Shop at 4.98★ (4 locations). Lowest: In-Bay Automatic at 3.93★ (2 locations).
| Format | Locations | % of MSA | Reviews | Avg Rating | Damage Rate | Cancel Friction |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Detail Shop | 4 | 44.4% | 471 | 4.98 | 0.00% | — |
| Express Tunnel | 3 | 33.3% | 1,197 | 4.15 | 6.53% | 18.6% |
| In-Bay Automatic | 2 | 22.2% | 280 | 3.93 | 7.50% | 50.0% |
What is the typical household income near Ankeny car washes?
Each ZIP in Ankeny is joined to IRS Statistics-of-Income (tax year 2022) and to the per-location Google rating dataset. The scatter below sizes dots by review volume and colors them by format.
Pearson r between ZIP income and rating across 9 qualifying locations: 0.12 — mild positive. Higher-income ZIPs host slightly better-rated washes; weak but present. Scatter mean: $115K AGI/return, 4.49★.
Car wash count and quality by income tier
Blue bars: location count per tier. Orange tick marks: average Google rating (same y-axis).
| Income tier (mean AGI/return) | ZIPs | Locations | Reviews | Avg Rating | Top Format |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Under $50K | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.00 | — |
| $50K – $75K | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.00 | — |
| $75K – $100K | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.00 | — |
| $100K – $150K | 2 | 9 | 1,948 | 4.32 | Detail Shop (4) |
| $150K+ | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.00 | — |
Income band spread: 0/0.00★ at the highest tier; 0/0.00★ at the lowest. In a balanced market, the per-tier read is most useful as a sanity check on whether the operating quality is income-uniform or income-stratified.
Who operates the most Ankeny car washes?
5 chains run sites in Ankeny; the top 25 are listed below by location count, with their per-chain operating-quality numbers next to them. Useful for narrowing competitive-set considerations or for M&A evaluation.
| # | Chain | Locations | Reviews | Avg Rating | Damage | Cancel | Upsell |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Oasis Car Wash | 1 | 388 | 4.40 | — | — | — |
| 2 | Mister Car Wash | 1 | 250 | 4.10 | — | — | — |
| 3 | Executive Laser Wash | 1 | 239 | 3.90 | — | — | — |
| 4 | Rocket Carwash | 1 | 559 | 4.00 | 5.48% | 16.7% | 22.83% |
| 5 | bp | 1 | 41 | 4.10 | — | — | — |
What do customers love and complain about at Ankeny car washes?
The aspect grid below summarizes 661 AI-extracted reviews across 9 Ankeny car wash locations. Each aspect lands on a -1…+1 scale (negative = customers complain more than they praise; positive = the reverse).
Where are the 9 car washes in Ankeny, IA?
Top 10 car washes by review volume in Ankeny. The full set of 9 is available in the underlying dataset.
| Location | City | Format | Chain | Rating | Reviews | ZIP AGI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shine Shop Carwash 3301 N Ankeny Blvd | Ankeny, IA | Express Tunnel | Rocket Carwash | 4.0 | 559 | $108K |
| Oasis Car Wash 635 SE Oralabor Rd | Ankeny, IA | Express Tunnel | Oasis Car Wash | 4.4 | 388 | $123K |
| OCDetailing 8019 NW 35th St | Ankeny, IA | Detail Shop | — | 5.0 | 255 | $108K |
| Mister Car Wash 109 S Ankeny Blvd | Ankeny, IA | Express Tunnel | Mister Car Wash | 4.1 | 250 | $108K |
| Executive Laser Wash 1825 SW Oralabor Rd | Ankeny, IA | In-Bay Automatic | Executive Laser Wash | 3.9 | 239 | $123K |
| A & A Auto Detailing 315 SW Maple St Suite I | Ankeny, IA | Detail Shop | — | 5.0 | 124 | $108K |
| Midwest Auto Detailers 405 SE Magazine Rd Suite Suite 103 | Ankeny, IA | Detail Shop | — | 4.9 | 72 | $123K |
| bp 102 N Ankeny Blvd | Ankeny, IA | In-Bay Automatic | bp | 4.1 | 41 | $108K |
| Deep Clean Auto 1279 SE Village View Ln | Ankeny, IA | Detail Shop | — | 5.0 | 20 | $123K |
Compare Ankeny to other car wash markets in the Des Moines metro
Cities in the same metro, ordered by closest comparable size. Each link runs the same operator concentration, format mix, and customer-experience analysis.
Data as of 2026-05-22. Pick a format and click Copy.
WashIndex. (2026, May 22). Ankeny, IA car wash market analysis. https://washindex.com/car-wash-cities/ankeny-ia
WashIndex. "Ankeny, IA car wash market analysis." WashIndex. Last modified May 22, 2026. https://washindex.com/car-wash-cities/ankeny-ia.
"Ankeny, IA car wash market analysis." WashIndex, May. 22, 2026, https://washindex.com/car-wash-cities/ankeny-ia.
@misc{washindex_car_wash_cities_ankeny_ia_2026,
title = {{Ankeny, IA car wash market analysis}},
author = {{WashIndex}},
year = {2026},
month = {May},
url = {https://washindex.com/car-wash-cities/ankeny-ia},
urldate = {2026-05-22},
} About this analysis
Car wash inventory for Ankeny, IA is sourced from the WashIndex national car-wash place index, filtered to places whose Google-Maps-reported city matches Ankeny, and further restricted to places whose format the WashIndex LLM classifier identified as a car wash (excluding dealerships, gas stations, and other auto-related businesses that don't primarily operate a car wash). Inclusion in the parent Des Moines MSA dataset is established by point-in-polygon against the official US Census county boundaries (TIGER/Line, 2024).
Operating-quality signals are derived from 661 customer reviews processed through WashIndex's 55-field LLM extraction pipeline. Format classification comes from a separate per-location website-reading classifier. ZIP-level income data is from the IRS Statistics of Income (tax year 2022) — mean Adjusted Gross Income per tax return, which is directionally aligned with ACS median household income but available without authentication.
See our full methodology for the extraction pipeline, validation samples, and aggregation logic. Term definitions in the glossary.
Machine-readable: JSON ↓ · API root
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