When all you mess around with are sub-$1,000 shitbox cars, you’re bound to offend your nostrils. It’s just a way of life for me, I guess. Over the years, I’ve had cars that hadn’t been opened in decades that had enough mold spores inside to give a bull moose pause, rodent nests that defied belief, a power steering pump filled with a mixture of old oil and human urine, and cars that had that old, damp, rotting carpet over old, damp, rotting sound deadener. The Cadillac limo comes to mind. And those are just static smells…burning wiring, a catalytic converter that is emitting an odor more foul than a pepperoni pizza-fueled dog fart, and that mixture of hot coolant, hot oil and hot automatic trans fluid that says you went a little too hard all have their own…um…aromas.
But today, we want to know what your worst smell is. Which might have you wondering why we picked a photo of a new Hyundai Palisade for this story. Well, it appears that if you check the right options for the SUV (Limited mode, light-colored Nappa leather upholstery), you are rewarded for your choices with a funk that smells something to the effect of a foul dinner laced with a ton of garlic. Yum. The hotter it is in the cabin, the more your sinuses are going to mutiny. Compared, wet carpet isn’t so bad. It might not be anywhere close to “something died in here”, sure, but be real…nothing smells worse than dead flesh.
Except for that one time I put a durian in Haley’s truck for a few hours. I still get hell for that.
I was a pipefitter for years. Try the grease trap in a commercial kitchen.
Went crabbing and put a bushel basket full of the little critters in the trunk with a wet burlap sack over them. One climbed out, hid behind the bolted down spare tire, and proceeded to die. Didn’t find him until 2 weeks later! Steamed the trunk at the do it yourself car wash, but hardly helped.
Rear end gear oil with the posi lube
posi rear end lube stays with you for days.
buddy of mine put a trout in a co-workers back door, he never did find it. i got even with a guy i worked with-zip tied a strawberry cinnamon febreeze can wide open and tossed it under his seat, he drove to work for four days with all the windows down.
my parents rented a drawer at the local meat locker. one summer i was sent to pick up several pounds of meat. One of the packages of hamburger fell behind the driver’s seat. I rolled up my windows and locked my doors and proceeded to leave it set in the sun for a week in july in the midwest. When i finally opened the car it didn’t take long to find the meat. That car needed an air freshener the rest of it’s days.
I worked for a rental company during school. A pissed off customer put fish guts in the spare tire well of a Ford Tempo. No one knew,car never could be rented again.
I had a 40 ford cpe with a BB ford built good. went over the top of a hill and there was one of the most swelled up dead raccoons. I hit it with my ladder bars and it stuck to them,the warden and i were gagging a lot until we could get to car wash
man that hair……
Can of 40 year old berryman’s chemdip. get it on your skin, it is there for days. Get it on your clothes, you might as burn them. I am sure that is what made the Joker insane.
Customers minivan at a dealership in Phoenix, got in to take it to the stall. Man it had to be rotten baby formula or formula throw up,(judging by at least 2 kid car seats) couldn’t get the windows down fast enough!
A small Tupperware half of chicken livers, that was left in a buddy’s old Saturn for a week during a Palmdale summer about 15 years ago.
Second was spilled posi fluid in a different friend’s car. Those smells never go away.
I worked as an Insurance Homeowner claims estimator for a couple major carriers. The nastiest losses I had to handle were what we called tenant vandalism claims. They were claims where landlords would file eviction notices, usually for non payment of rent. Some tenants would feel the need to retaliate during the 30-60 days the law gave the sheriff could kick them out. To say some were nasty is a gross understatement. I recall one where I entered the home to be immediately slapped in the face by the following bouquet: dog urine and turds (some possibly human) smeared into the carpets, walls so filthy parts were almost black, dirty dishes and pans stacked all over the kitchen counters and sink with rotting food, toilet bowls overflowing with human turds and urine. There were maggots and flies everywhere. And yes, I still had to go through the entire home room by room. Even with a mask I could only be in the home a max of about 5-10 minutes max. I spent almost an entire morning inspecting the loss this way. 5-10 minutes photographing, measuring and taking notes. Run outside and breathe for 5-10 minutes and repeat. I went straight home after, took my clothes off outside in the garage and then straight to the shower.
Worked for a Medical Waste Co., the rendering plant where it was disposed of smelled of death, the smell took days to get off yourself, Co. supplied boots& uniforms–did not wear them home (forbidden)
Forgot to mention the backs of the trucks smelled wonderful too (could knock you down on a hot day)
Where I grew up, there as an area near the river that was mostly sand, and muskeg. Everybody called it “The Dunes”. There were several spots where there were frequently Bush parties, and sometimes they got pretty rowdy, And occasionally cars that were driven out there never made the drive home. Seems like it would be a pretty ordinary offensive odor, but if you think the stench of high mileage gear oil is bad, you should get a whiff of just how much worse it is after the car has been rolled down a hill and BURNT!!
There was a big old early seventies Mopar out there, at the bottom of the hill, and it had an 8-3/4 in it….and at the time, my lil bro had just bought an old Super Stock Chevy II that had an 8-3/4, so being as it was abandoned and upside down, I pulled the center section for the bro, and WOW, it was bad!!
My mate’s Rottwieler farted in the back of his van when it was packed with about 20 of us on the way to a party!
Yeah, the dog always gets the blame.
Can of Orange Juice concentrate, rolled out of the groceries and into the quarter of a less than a year old Caddy. Lil ol lady said her car smelled funny. The flies would detour around the trunk opening.
Tacoma
jp8 and human waste.
I’ve smelled rotting corpses fermenting in the sun for days, but it took a solid year to get the burn barrel smell completely out of my olfactory memory.