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Every old car seems to have it's own smell. A Sunbeam Talbot that I owned in college smelled like every MG I ever sat in, kind of musty with a hint of burned oil. Porsches I've owned seemed to smell like the library in an exclusive men's club with dim green lights, overstuffed leather chairs and high ceilings, somewhat like the inside of an old wallet. I figured that a car’s odor was a result of what materials were used to build them. It turns out there's a little more to it than that, it has a lot to do with what you connect with those smells. When I was a kid we lived in southern California and we made an annual trip back to a little town in Missouri at Christmas time to see family. The trip was three straight days of driving on two lane roads all the way. With no snow on the ground in Orange County it was always a treat to see the drifts along Route 40 as we approached the grandparents house. Back in those days the homes in the Midwest were all heated with coal and smoke could be seen from every chimney. It was a real picture postcard for a city kid from La La land. One year a warm winter had kept the Missouri River cornfields barren but I remember telling my Dad that I was sure that snow was on the way. He asked me how I knew and I told him that I could smell it in the air. He laughed and said that snow didn't have a smell it was frozen water. I was insistent that snow had a very strong odor and everyone could smell it. Turns out that as a child I had associated coal burning with snow on the ground and with the coal smoke in the air there was no question in my mind that snow was about to fall. Keep in mind that this was the same kid that thought Washington DC was the capital of Washington state until he was ten. My first car was a VW Beetle and I used to run errands for my mother with that car for gas money. One of my favorite trips was to the local 7-11 (yes, we had them back in the old days) for a gallon of milk. That was when milk was 99 cents per gallon and sold in large glass containers with plastic rings on the top. I always placed the milk on the floor on the passenger side next to the tunnel. On this particular run I had backed into the parking spot facing the street so that I could make a speedy launch when leaving, or as speedy as you could get with 36 hp and 1700 pounds. As I dropped the clutch and jerked the wheel to the left the milk leaned to the right and struck the floor with the same noise that a stone makes when it's dropped into a large body of water, only quieter. As I hit the brakes I could hear the tidal wave of milk heading for the firewall on the passenger side. I couldn't go back to the store since I didn't have another dollar, so I went home to face the music. On the short ride home what seemed like three inches of milk rolled around the footwell looking for a way out. And it found one. The heater vent for the floor was an opening in a tube that went all the way back to the engine. It might as well have said exit on it because when I mopped the milk out I only got about a quart. The rest was in the in the heating system and for the next several years every time I turned the heat on all I could smell was sour milk for the first few minutes. When I get in a car that smells like Pumpkin (the VW was orange), I know exactly what it is. Someone spilled milk in it. It happens more often that you would think. My first Porsche was a '59 Sunroof Coupe, white with a red interior. It was purchased from a US serviceman who was returning to Europe and had to sell it in a hurry. He was much older (probably 40) than I and was very dignified. Smoked a pipe like Hugh Hefner and dressed very sharp. I was really impressed and figured that if I could buy the car I could grow up to be just like him. I only met him for about an hour total and that included an exciting ride through Rock Creek Park in DC. Well, I got the car and a couple of months later while at a PCA gathering some one asked me to look at their car and tell them if it had a leather interior since I had boasted about mine. I looked and sniffed and said no it didn't. Another member disagreed so we went back to my car to compare. Since it didn't have the same rich smell as mine, I figured it couldn't be leather. It didn't have the same smell because the previous owner of the other car didn't smoke a pipe. That's when I discovered the difference in smell between leather and tobacco and how they both stick to the inside of a car. It turned out that my 356 didn't have leather either but that cockpit always made me think of a fighter jet whenever I got in it. Old cars have a lot of strange materials in them. The insulation in the doors and roof of a 356 are a combination of horsehair and burlap sprayed with an oil based mixture that retards decomposition. Many of the materials used years ago actually decompose and that is what gives different cars their distinctive odor. Most British sports cars had leather seats stuffed with horsehair so if you thought your uncle's Morgan smelled like a barnyard, it probably does and there's a good reason. On the other hand, most 356s have had vinyl interiors and seats, some with corduroy inserts. It was sort of like a cross between that oilcloth that covered the art class tables in the third grade and those corduroy pants that made a noise when you walked. Add to that any odor you associate with the car so many years ago and that's what memories are made of. Nowadays the insulation materials are synthetic and have some great properties. They don't decompose; they are waterproof and never get moldy. Most of the smell in a new car is a mixture of plastic and adhesive and it doesn't stay around for long. I think that's kind of a shame because as the years roll by you'll probably never remember those cars at all. Think about the cars that you bought and drove in the '90's. Can you remember anything distinctive about how they smelled? You would think that at today’s prices the cars would be more memorable. I guess that's what I like about cars with four speeds and drum brakes; they're worth remembering. KTF |
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