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
How about going duck hunting and one of the ducks rolls behind the spare tire and is discovered a week
later with your nose….it never goes away, always a haunt, rancid poultry is the worst…
Any kind of exhaust.
Surprised no one mentioned that gear oil makes your farts really smelly. Always did for me every time I dropped a diff.
the smell of smoke trapped in Lucas wiring.
Not mentioned burning clutch disk
Massively overcharged battery, due to a failed voltage regulator (I’ll never forget that one). Spilled diesel fuel (it will never let you forget your mistake).
I agree with differential oil, and burned up belts from an alternator or AC compressor seizing and cooking the belts.
I’ve bobtailed a couple of tractors that are used to haul human waste biosolids. The smell is unbelievable
The most inside of the cab of a service rig crew truck in the summer time was full of unpleasant smells
Mold.
I spilled a bottle of gun bluing on my truck passenger floor and every time time it rains the leaky cab reminds me of it. It’s a caustic pickling agent smell.
I had a customer at a Nissan dealership (in Canada) who had just done some shopping at the grocery store. They went away for a month. When they returned the smell inside their vehicle was horrible. Like something had actually died inside. Upon further inspection by the customer they noticed a rotting roast beef under the driver’s seat! It would actually make a person vomit!!! We washed the carpets and put air freshers(called wafers by the detail industry) in the vehicle and under the seats etc. After several months the smell kind of disappeared. But when it would rain that smell would return. They eventually got rid of the car for good reasons.
Only in Canada eh??
Hammer from Northern Ontario Canada
The car air freshener tree called “Black Ice” nasty just, nasty, I don’t understand how someone drives w/ that smell in their vehicle all day
Gotten used to the gear oil smell over the years. 20 year old gas? I’ll never burn that out of my sniffer. One drop and you might as well burn the clothes you’re wearing. Extremely vintage diesel that has varnished say inside an old fuel injection pump also has an unmistakably putrid odor that is unforgettable once experienced. I think the worst combination I’ve encountered is burnt electrical resulting FROM of mouse encampment. That’s a dynamic duo there!
A little side note on the Tesla fire pictured in the article. That was a planned event, training for our local FD, an event I knew nothing about until I FELT the explosion some 15 miles away where I was living at the time. Ibet the heat and smell of that fire was intense!