Preserving New Car Smell?!?!

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galaxy

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So here's one...what's the best way to preserve the smell of a brand new car while maintaining my standards? Many of the products we use to clean, maintain, and detail an interior have their own fragrance and those actions probably take away from what creates that new smell. Is it a matter of balancing what you use to clean and detail daily? Or do you just have to accept the smell is going to fade eventually anyways?
 
View attachment 52818Well sure, the smell will eventually fade. Probably the fastest way to kill a new car smell is smoking. Or cooked foods in the car.

I'll share a funny but true story from back in 1994. I had just bought a brand new black on black Lincoln Town Car Signature Series, and this was in Chicago.

I'm by a friend's house two days after the purchase, and my buddies that night wanted to take a ride to the famous 24 hour a day Jim's Hot Dog-Polish Sausage Stand on Halsted&Maxwell St. In my new car!

I of course said "Most definitely not!" and they laughed like hell. It would've taken me a month, and a literal crate load of Christmas Tree Air Fresheners to get rid of the smell, especially the Grilled Onions, which when the wind was blowing right, you could smell a mile away! LOL I at least wanted to enjoy "that new car smell" a little bit longer! :-)
 
The Little Trees New Car Scent air freshener is the closest thing I've found. You have to be careful though as a little of that goes a long ways in my experience. Don't rip open the package and hang the whole tree as it will be pretty strong. I cut open a sliver of the package and ease a little out at a time while leaving it in the side door storage bin.
 
That smell is just outgassing of the rubber and plastic. It will last as long as it will last regardless of how often you clean it. I keep a pretty good schedule for my car when I bought it in 2012. A wipe down with various cleaners at least once a month. People would comment that it still had that new car smell long after I could never notice it, maybe 3 years. When it sits out in the sun and gets nice in hot I can still get a whiff of it now even after 5 years.
 
2014 Kia Sorento: My process to try and preserve the new car smell has been staying on top of maintaining it clean and clutter free, and keeping the carpets vacuumed IMO is 1st and foremost. Another thing I did for the past 2 years is keep the use of heavy cleaners/fragrances to a minimum. D114 helped with that, as it does great for quik interior wipedowns whenever needed and doesn't leave behind much of a scent. It's been 2 years, and just last week I used a Meguiars New Car scent Air Refresher fogger for the 1st time because the new car smell was starting to fade away.. Does it really duplicate the new car smell? Sort of, in its own way.
 
Considering that the smell is as said before "outgassing" it's toxic, I like it to go away fast.
 
One thing that helps kinda rekindle the new car smell is using a leather conditioner on leather seats that have leather scent. I just conditioned my seats using pinnacle leather conditioner, and at least for a little while, the smell of leather is permiating my interior. There are arguments whether conditioning leather is necessary or not, but to get that leather scent, I do it.
 
ronkh57 said:
Considering that the smell is as said before "outgassing" it's toxic, I like it to go away fast.
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its also the smell of the adhesives that are used, the only one that sticks around the longest are VW in the Jetta which is well known for its box of crayons like smell
 
The company I work for bought a fleet of new vehicals and I can literally taste the plastic and rubber toxins, after I drive them. I used to like the smell of new cars but now I dont
 
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