I suppose the inverse of today’s Autopian ask is an easy one: New Car Smell is the best car smell. It’s also the only good smell that comes to mind, at least for me, amongst the many, many smells associated with cars – which are mostly not-good, and to varying degrees bad, awful, and/or gross.
OK, but what do you mean by car smells? Smells produced by cars? Well, sure, those odors are of course on the list. In fact, Matt, presumably mid The Morning Dump, instantly offered burnt clutch as the worst car smell. Indeed, there is no Burnt Clutch scented Little Trees Air Freshener for a reason. Brian (Silvestro, but you should be on a first-name basis by now) countered with “diff oil,” and “hot-ass brake dust,” not to be confused with “hot ass-brake dust,” which is a different thing that also smells bad.
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I would like to raise Matt and Brian with cherry-red catalytic converter under my Dodge Omni in college, the glowing box of hot stench that befouled my secretly-a-Talbot hatchback halfway through a date. It was a bit of a mood-killer TBH.
I would also count as car-smells any odors one is likely to encounter in a car, even if not car-generated. Obviously, “blown-out diaper” and “carsick puke” are way up there. But I’m also strangely grossed out by food smells; a big bag of In-N-Out smells delicious on the way home, but when I get into the car later and the smell of Double-Doubles and animal-style fries hits my nose anew, it makes me wanna hurl.
Your turn: What’s The Worst Car Smell?
Top graphic image: DepositPhotos.com
What’s The Worst Car Smell?
Engine fire.
Milk-based vomit.
I shall never forgive my 4th grade friend for retching in my mom’s gold Volvo 240 GL.
^This is the answer.
I’ve seen professional grade ionizers reduce terrible odors from vehicles. Never 100%, but enough to get to acceptable levels. Even when a disgruntled employee decided to pour gasoline on brand new Infiniti’s and light them (and the rest of the dealer building) on fire… the other smoke damaged (but not physically damaged) cars were treated with enough ionizers and chemicals to be able to sell them to someone, and they weren’t too bad on the inside.
But anything milk/dairy related? There isn’t enough chemicals or ionizing machines in the world if enough milk was spilled on soft surfaces. You have to replace all of whatever soft surfaces it seeped in to…which can actually “total” a car if you need to replace an expensive seat, etc..
I’m getting kinda nauseous even remembering what that Chevy Lumina smelled like after an entire gallon of milk was spilled in it.
Dairy becomes exponentially worse when partially digested and intermixed with bile.
yikes….
All Walmart brand milk containers leak to save a penny on the cost.
ALL of them!
When the cabin air filter is says “Newport.”
The worst car smell is the smell of burning oil and white-hot metal which tends to occur right before your engine locks up.
I don’t know that I can identify some specific odiferous element, but all my current cars are pretty old and have been owned by others before me, usually for decades. Hence, if I haven’t driven one in a week, and then open the door, I’m greeted by an aroma not of my own making/choosing.
Nothing insane like blue cheese (which I love btw) or the after effects of hauling composted manure, but still: ‘stuffy’ would be an excessively kind descriptor. Lately, I’ve been thinking about getting an ozone generator thingy (under $100. at Amazon) to try to improve things a bit. Anyone have any experience with these for that purpose?
Ammo NYC on YouTube uses them regularly, and also covers his own products that can help break down bio-level contaminants.
Though I think he uses a tablet based treatment not the electrical generator type.
I borrowed one a couple years back for a ‘smoker’s package’ convertible project that I had just bought–overflowing ashtray, ashes on carpets and all. Ran it longer than what’s usually recommended (I think I ran it for most of a day), but it definitely did the trick.
This is easy. Automatic transmission fluid that hasn’t been changed since the Clinton administration smells like burnt bacon stuffed into Ron Jeremy’s ass. Like Polish sausage that’s been left out in the sun for a week.
This is the answer. It’s a smell that stays with you.
Oh yeah, when I was a kid in the pit at a quick-lube, we dropped pans every day, and I’d get soaked in that shit. It took a week’s worth of showers while working upstairs (under the hood) to get the smell off of me.
(shivering)
Cold cream or anything based on cold cream soaked into the skin will get anything off.
Wipe off.
Wash with plain soap and water and even old grease comes off your fingernails.
I always used the Neutrogena body lotion as a hand lotion for this, until they stopped selling it in USA, for unknown reasons.
Still sold in Canadia and other places!!
I can’t be the only person that prefered it as there is a rampant import business for the stuff at imported drug prices.
That’s a rough one for sure. Just Sunday a tech accidentally drained some out of an Audi. I stayed well clear of the remediation operation.
The gear oil in a fried Ford 8.8 or an Explorer PTU would like to have a word with you.
Nope. Its ATF that hasn’t been changed.since the Johnson administration:
https://www.motorbiscuit.com/you-wont-believe-how-whale-oil-was-once-used-in-cars/
“burnt bacon stuffed into Ron Jeremy’s ass. Like Polish sausage that’s been left out in the sun for a week.”
All that is dwarfed by the reek of rancid dead sperm whale.
I was going to also suggest the sulfuric aroma of a clogged catalytic converter. but I suppose you could also capture the scent of neglect. Either Mold from clogged sunroof drains or Dead Mouse Garage(usually mixed with Feces/urine pre-death)
Ventilated seats on a rental car.
Years ago, I got a rental car with black leather seats in the South. Being mid-summer, I found the seats insanely hot and started to sweat. I made the mistake of turning on the seat ventilators. What I discovered was:
The result was that the car instantly filled with something that should be banned by the Geneva Convention when I set the seat ventilators to high. I literally had to roll all the windows so I could see because my eyes were tearing up so bad.
For me, it’s hot coolant. Not because it’s actually the worst smell, but because that sickly sweet scent triggers me and is an immediate sign of a problem that will steal time and money from my future.
I had an expensive raw gas smell yesterday. Fortunately, it was just a coil going bad (again), but the sudden loss of power, flashing CEL and raw gas smell makes me think it’s going to be a car payment soon.
A lot of good bad smells here. One that is just “mildlyinfuriating” is when someone gets out a bottle of hand sanitizer and smears it all around. It’s bad enough being around that stuff outside a car, but being trapped in the car with it is nauseating.
PAG A/C refrigerant oil, 90 weight gear oil, and whatever that rotten egg smell from malfunctioning catalytic converters is.
That gear oil is HORRIBLE. It’s actually an additive that goes into any EP grease. I think made from a factory connected to a Portapotty Potty at Hell’s Woodstock 3 experience.
Hands down this is the worst smell. When I was in insurance I had a customer die in his van. He was not discovered for 4 weeks… in the summer. He was a large man and he oozed into every nook and cranny. The insurance company was trying to get his family to drive the van from police impound to an autobody shop. I went out impound walked up to the van got up to the door and threw up. The police said it was a biohazard and no one was allowed in the van. It got towed and totaled after the claims adjuster got with in 20 feel of the van.
You win today’s game.
Winner, winner… let’s not think about eating dinner.
The Memphis Police Department missed a dead person in a van, impounded it and towed it to impound, where it was discovered much later.
This was recently.
Whatever my daughter has done to the old family Subaru Legacy – some combination of cross country runners / shoes, track runners / shows, and the air freshener that she thinks magically eliminates the other odors. I drive it once a week now she is in college and regret that choice for my whole commute.
Sports equipment is the worse. When my son played soccer, we gave up on longer trips more than once and got new shin pads and shoes instead of having to live with them on the way home from a tournament. Soccer cleats are stupid expensive, but it was worth $200 new shoes to maintain my sanity.
Hockey gear bags are BAD.
I’ve heard Hockey gear is the worse. Can’t imagine, teenage boy soccer cleats were horrible enough.
My college roommate was a GOALIE.
Can confirm.
Nothing like having a teenage boy exercise in 70 lbs of padding to make a stink.
I took fencing in college. The class provided protective gear was BAD. Nothing like putting on a glove that’s slimy on the inside It was like shoving your hand into a bucket of slugs. The masks were WORSE. Can’t imagine a Hockey goalie mask.
that is the uncommonly hard to understand funk that seems to be strictly teenager. sometimes it is just them too. the other stuff holds it in of course, but yeah Teen Gunk is bad.
I once worked on updating controls on a middle school HVAC system. The storage closet for the wrestling mats was insanely awful.
Clutch.
NO smell at all is the best car smell.
(Except maybe a car full of fresh french bread or something like that.)
Oh, this is so easy. Changing the supercharger oil on the Eaton M90 on my Buick Regal GS after about 100k miles. Like burnt toe cheese, and that’s not an exaggeration. Worst thing I’ve ever smelled on a car.
A stringer full of long-dead bullheads. There was a kid at my high school who was a terrible bully. He was big and would beat the crap out of kids regularly to the point of broken noses and stitches. It was the 80s, so of course, no adult did a thing about it. One summer, he went to live with his grandparents in the next state over and left his old Nova at home. Two of the kids he would torment regularly decided that after a day of fishing at the creek, they would deposit their catch inside his car. That gift sat there all summer long.
That’s some first-rate cartooning, Pete. Just excellent.
Nothing can match aerated antifreeze that is leaking from the heater core and then chilled by the A/C. It is not only suffocating but it can be deadly too.
A close second would be baby vomit and sour milk remnants that come back to haunt after any rainy day.
This! I had this happen with a $150 ’78 Buick Regal I had briefly in college. There was a small and a greasy film on the inside of the windshield. The only difference was that it was winter in Wisconsin, so the AC wasn’t part of the issue. Ince I had no way, or desire, to fix the car, I just drained all of the coolant out of the system and counted on below-zero temps to allow drives long enough to get to work and back. It worked for a while, and then we had a warm day.
I was going to suggest cigarette smoke and any aerosol/car deodorizers. Apparently, I misjudged the responses
Being a bit contrarian here (I wouldn’t call it the worst car smell — although this is a genuinely held belief): I hate new car smell; it makes me nauseous and pretty much immediately triggers intense carsickness. Can’t do it.
Yeah, it’s pretty toxic.
Yeah its awful.
The worst car smell is whatever you smell from something going awry with your car whenever you have only 42 dollars in your bank account.
By far the worst smell is always burnt diff fluid….cannot get it out of my garage…
When I was service advisor working one of my mandatory oil change only Saturdays we had someone come in with a car that our oil change boys wouldn’t even get into. They came to us and said “We can’t work on this car, it smells like death”. I offered to get the manager on duty who was actually our regional level manager, in charge of multiple dealerships. I told him what was happening and he rolled his eyes and got up from watching the football game (we’re in Central Ohio, football is everything around here).
When he got to the young technicians, he gave them an ultimatum “If I get into this car and put it on a lift, you’re all getting docked pay” and then he pointed to the technician who initially refused to work on the car “And you’re going home for the day”
“That’s fine” the technician said. “you’ll see…” By this point I was too damn curious to not follow them to the car. It was an old corolla that used to be black but was now many colors of brown and rust. When the manager opened the door, I think I lost a few years off of my life. It was definitely organic but so intense, I genuinely don’t know how someone drove in it.
I’m not sure what the smell was or what could have caused it but it was literally worse than death. I was easily 15-20ft away and it felt like it burned my facial hair and stung my eyes. The manager went pale and immediately slammed the door shut, holding back gags he told the technicians “yeah, I’ll call the customer and tell them that we can’t work on their car” and he shuffled back to his office to call the customer.
I will probably never truly know what that smell was from but it was truly the worst thing I have ever smelled in my life.
New “new car smell” may be nice. “New car smell” in the 70s and 80s meant a barrage of solvents that was all too likely to soon disappear under “puked-in new car”.
New car smell in anything made in a Soviet Bloc car was an awful solvent smell that never went away. Ladas were the worst but we also got Yugos and Skodas in Canada and they all smelled terrible.
British cars also had a distinctive smell, but (to me at least) it’s a pleasant memory lane trip.