What’s the Best Smell in a Car?
The internet is littered with content that suggests that what smells good to some people evokes the exact opposite reaction in others. The latest According to You question will likely add to that, but first, I owe you an explanation: This question’s origin wafted up from a very non-automotive source.
It stems from my personal wake-up call that osmophobia is real. Smells can trigger headaches in some folks, and I’ve discovered that one spice (cumin, probably) is the trigger for painful sinus headaches for yours truly. As a South Asian American, it’s unfortunate that such a delicious part of my culinary heritage does this to me, but I’m thankful it only happens when the smell is very strong.
Be it spices, freshly cut grass, a light rain, or chemicals in vehicles, we all have different reactions to smells. It’s been suggested that not everyone smells things the same to everyone for valid physical reasons. And for this very, very personal reason, I began to think about the positive angle of this topic—what’s my favorite smell in cars?
Allow me to pick the lowest-hanging fruit. Leather seats smell absolutely wonderful to my olfactory nerves. (Thank goodness they don’t trigger my headaches!) And, for me anyway, leather paired with new car smell is downright addictive.
There are other smells I enjoy, like the contrast of old engine oil versus fresh synthetic oil after performing an oil change in my own driveway. That’s the smell of satisfaction for a job well done. But it can’t touch the smell of leather in my book. So I kick the question back to you, dear members of the Hagerty Community:
What’s the best smell in a car?
I’m a big fan of the noise of metal expanding or shrinking and the smells that accompany it. On my current Lexus its a burning oil smell as it drips onto the hot exhaust and the dry smell that comes with it(I’m just waiting till the timing belt needs replacing to do all the seals) as well as the sound and smell of rain when I’m in a flag station on track, the pinging of the Armco when the sun comes up after the rain and the fresh earth smell mixed with the sights and smells of racecars.
As said by Sir William Lyons, the automobile is the closest we can come to building a sentient animal.
Nothing like the smell of racing fuel out of the open headers of a Super Late Model
Dirt car in the middle of July. It’s the very best. 44H 🏁🏁🏁
I’m sure it was off-gassing of chemicals contained in new car interiors, but nothing smelled better than the new car smell in a 60s automobile. Probably a good dose of old fashioned nostalgia is very prevalent in that smell.
On the flight deck of an Aircraft carrier with jet fumes, and Stack gas on the old carriers that are not nuclear.
I think that many 60’s vintage cars have a similar smell that comes from the jute (Juke?) backing under the carpet. It’s from an aged combination of spilled beer, cigarette smoke, burnt rubber and sweat (if you have vinyl seats).
The magical aroma of high octane racing fuel, early in the morning. It evokes excitement and the adrenaline surge of the track sessions to come. Practice, qualifying, racing, whatever. Yeah, baby – Let’s GO!
Call me crazy, cause I am, but Hoppes 9 solvent on some cloth pads under the seats always reminds me of my granddads gun shop
Okay, you’re crazy (per your instructions).
However, mentioning the smell of Hoppes #9 in a car makes me instantly think of the good ol’ days of putting the recently cleaned and oiled shotgun in the gun rack and heading out at ungodly hours for the duck blind. Man-sweat, spilled coffee, pipe smoke and river muck on the waders all mingled together with the gun oil in some of my old trucks, and I do miss them all.
The way the interior smelled in a new 1970 Chevelle SS396, the way a new CB750 Honda smelled, the “new car” smell when I was younger. Outside the car? Blendzall fumes from a DT-1 Yamaha, the aroma of high-sulphur diesel fuel after it left the stack of my late uncle’s Peterbilt, and, like so many others here have stated, the severe olfactory assault that only burnt Ch3N2O can provide…
Has no one said WD40 yet??!!
Of course leather is number one but WD40 smells like everything is running smoothly and nothing is sticking.
Smell of Castrol Oil, race gas and a fresh bag of salted peanuts in the pits of Laguna Seca.(beer in hand)
The smell of the leather seats is my favorite smell. It reminds me of my black on black 1997 Cadillac STS Seville, in a much simplier time when I thought that car was a rocket ship.
My 10-year-old olfactory system was instantly overwhelmed when first I climbed aboard my grandfather’s Humber Super Snipe, built in England sometime in the early 1960s. They had to pry me out.
This wasn’t really a car. It was a four-wheeled platform that transported an Edwardian drawing room.
Went to a local watering hole several years ago. Guy had a car parked out front from the twenties. Can’t remember make. Looked like he just drug it out of a barn. Windows were down. I stuck my head inside and the musty smell fit the car perfect. Hit my senses and then started to think about what and where that car has been for almost a century Better than any new car chemical smell
Old car smell. The materials old cars were made of have a very different scent profile than modern cars: cotton batting and steel springs; slightly oxidized metal. Mmmmm, tasty!
Don’t forget mustiness…
The smell of victory at the end of a quarter mile