Our Two Cents: Least Favorite Automotive Smells
A promise was made in our last installment of Our Two Cents, and today that promise is kept. It’s only natural to ponder the worst automotive smells after discussing the ones that most satisfy your nose. Sometimes you gotta take the bad with good, as cars are always a mixed blessing. It’s the contrast between the sweet aroma of certain gasolines and putrid 90-weight gear oil. Or the smell of a new car with a cheap interior versus one with really expensive bits and decadent leather trimmings.
So that’s how we kicked the question back to the staff here at Hagerty Media. Let’s see what are their least favorite automotive smells!
Interiors
“The VW Jetta (Mk IV) crayon smell in the interior: GROSS! Why? Because it’s just that unpleasant!” – Matt Tuccillo
“For me it was toxic new Hyundai smell from the 1990s. I wanted to enjoy seeing South Korean cars getting better and better (looking at you, Hyundai Scoupe) firsthand, so I’d try to check them out at the annual auto show. It took serious commitment to do so, even with the windows down. ” – Sajeev Mehta
“Faux leather that hasn’t finished off-gassing, a smell we recently experienced in a press car. Come on now, go cow or go home!” – Grace Houghton
Critters
“The smell of mouse encampments in spring after you so diligently tried to prevent them the previous autumn.”- Eddy Eckart
“The easy answer here is ancient rear differential oil. And it’s not just the stink, it’s that it seemingly never goes away, especially on clothing. However, there is not a single thing on earth that smells worse than cleaning rotten animal guts off the underside of a vehicle.
Thankfully, I have only had to do this twice. To clarify, I was not the one who ran over the already very much deceased animal in the middle of the road, but when that vehicle comes home to park in my driveway, I am the one that had to clean it!” – Ben Woodworth
Rental Cars
“Diesel exhaust. And most rental cars.” – Cameron Neveu
“And the backseat of every Uber.” – Sajeev Mehta
“Hey Sajeev, are we graduating this from smells to stains?” – Matt Tuccillo
“Oops, my bad. Ubers are bad because of the stains paired with the masking smells of car air fresheners. You can see the sins but you can’t quite smell them anymore.” – Sajeev Mehta
“We once had a Camaro convertible rental car in Colorado for a Barn Find Hunter shoot many years ago. (I got a convertible to shoot video from while wandering through the mountains). Had the top down when we got it at the airport. We put the top up when we stopped for lunch in Denver since we had some camera gear in there.
An hour or so in the hot, Colorado sun left us a nice surprise when we returned to the car. The thing smelled like vomit. Like, so bad the whole car may as well have been filled with vomit. It was awful. We quickly removed our things (while holding our breath), called the rental agency and told them to bring us a new car.”- Ben Woodworth
Cigarette Smoke
“I was a kid who grew up riding in the back seats of cars driven by cigarette-smoking adults, and that nauseating smell is unshakable because not only is it in the upholstery and carpeting and headliner, it quickly gets in your clothes and hair. These days, any time I get into a car that has been smoked in (which is not often, thankfully) I try to breathe through my mouth to avoid it.” – Stefan Lombard
Grab Bag
“Fire, for obvious reasons.” – Andrew Newton
“What about the smell of, “Huh, I wonder what that smell is? It’s probably fine.” – Ben Woodworth
“Trapped farts.” – Molly Jean
Gear Oil
“The answer is, obviously, diff oil. Sweaty gym sock filled with goose droppings, left overnight in a neglected bathhouse. Gives me chills just thinking about it.” – Eric Weiner
“Differential oil. Look at a picture of an axle draining diff: Can you smell it? I bet you can. Cam’s entry of diesel exhaust is up there too. I’m talking like an old indirect injected machine, that smell just gets in your clothes and takes a while to come out. Or a coal rolling tune on a bro dozer pickup. . .no thanks.” – Greg Ingold
Yes, gear oil is funky.
However, my college roommate Eddie, with his steady diet of kielbasa, kapusta and golumpki, could ruin any drive.
i agree with james wheeler & tim kuehl.
i refused to work on just a couple cars during my wrenching career. one had a combination of OLD spilt baby formula and gawd only knows what else in the back seat. the rich thick aroma got ‘better’ during the desert summer sun & heat. there was another that i could not get closer than 5 ft to one of its open door windows. someone(s) was obviously not an advocate of good personal hygiene. here’s a bonus: a fellow mechanic was working under the dash of a fairly new car owned by a nurse. the interior was already trashed. he was about to get sick and then saw some used feminine protection under the driver’s seat. still debating whether this should’ve been shared
not the worst smell imo, but one of my late wife’s brothers spilled diesel fuel in her volvo 240’s trunk years before i met her. it still had the same ripe smell 10 years later when we sold it. soaked the liners using strong detergent, washed all hard surfaces…didn’t change at all. one time, we left a sealed plastic bag of peeled shrimp in the trunk. after 3 days in our attached garage, we smelled something inside the house. opening the trunk was, well, it heinously rancid. you’d think it would’ve removed the diesel smell. NOPE, not even close.
after changing careers but still in automotive, a door separated my shared office from the shop area. warranty parts were disassembled and inspected at the other end of the shop. when the cover of a burned up rear axle or diff assembly was removed, that smell worked its way in the office. the techs left the covers removed on purpose (there were a few office folk they didn’t care for). needless to say, burnt gear oil has an exponentially stronger smell than what’s on the shelf. sulfur based gear oils are much stronger smelling than ashless/synthetic gear oils.
Gear oil is pretty bad, but my vote for worst vehicular stink is for *anything* having to do with a diesel. The raw fuel: puke-worthy. Un-treated exhaust of anything from an old Detroit Diesel or 70s Mercedes to the last pre-DEF Cummins: nauseating. The exhaust of the newest DPF, EGR, and DEF-strangled diesel of any type: eye-burning chemical stench like an over-treated swimming pool.
Post Taco Bell smells from your passenger. Get out!
Once I tried to “center” a deer carcess. Raining, too late to change lanes, didn’t see it till it was too late. Driving a car with a semi-high clearance, but about an inch to short. By the way, it was on the Interstate….able to slow to 50 or so. Pieces of it stuck under the car and started cooking on the hot exhaust. When I got home, tried to pressure wash it out but it took two weeks of driving for it to finally go away.
When I was a kid, my grandfather bought an early 60’s Pontiac Coroner’s wagon because the price was right. After a couple of days out in the Columbus, MS hot July sun, it was quite obvious why the price was “right”. He didn’t keep it a week!
I smell something dead…time to reside in the odor while searching for the mouse carcass; mouse nests & pee; old differential lube; the interior odor from a sweaty chainsmoker with nonop A/C; and Kroil…though it works well.
I will only read the first page of comments as I know entropy will cause the tenor of the comments to rapidly devolve. Kudos to all First-pagers on avoiding the low road. You are better men than I am.
If the previous owners were a family who bathed once a month, whether they needed to or not, they can leave a very foul odor when you open up a car.
After- run exhaust. How can the same fuel smell so different?
Here are a few that come to mind. In no particular order: Old gas gone bad in a newly-brought home project car. Burnt clutch. Fried brakes – particularly from large trucks at or near the bottom of Monteagle mountain on I-24 just West of Chattanooga (not really a mountain, but that’s what it is commonly referred to). Dead skunk tangled up in the underside of a friend’s car. Your wet dog on the way home from a hot Summer’s day of hiking in and around creeks and streams.
Years ago in Puerto Rico we went snorkeling and found a conch shell. Thinking it was empty we threw it in the trunk of the rental car. The next day we spent at our hotel and lounged around. The day after we were going to set out for a short charter to an island for more snorkeling but when we opened the trunk we were met with the stench of a Hermit Crab that baked for almost two full days.
i can agree with the gear oil never in 50 some years of being a frame man and tech was there any smell as bad i was a drag racer and if i was at the race track and needed to do any rear end work i would be under the car gaging old tire air is quite the smell to
seized engine
All I can think about are the two current stories about RFK Jr…a severed whale head strapped to the top of the car and a dead bear cub in the trunk. I can’t fathom the smells but can imagine having a beer with him and laughing hysterically.