Your Best Smelly Car Stories

[slw911SC]

Tell us yours - with pictures if you have them!

Prompted by a fellow Porsche enthusiast in Vancouver, BC whose wife recently forgot to take a zip lock bag of salmon from under the front seat of his 911, with obvious results, I'm reminded of 2 other similar stories:

While duck hunting south of Calgary years ago, my friend and I tossed a few of the ducks we had bagged into the trunk of his VW bug. We took them all out when we returned - or so we thought. 2 weeks later he opened the car to a horrific smell! One of the ducks had slipped in behind the spare tire and had been slowly marinating the whole time. The results were obvious!

While competing in bobsled competition several years ago in Switzerland, the Australian team were always well known for their practical jokes that they played on all the other teams. One night, in freezing cold weather conditions, some of the other competitors got into their BWW crew van and stuffed the top and bottom heater vents with frozen sardines. The next day, as they were travelling and the vehicle heated up, somthing started to smell really fishy!

[rouxroux]

In the late 70's I had a Vega with a 350 SBC. It had an Interpart front spoiler that ducted lots of air into the engine compartment. Somewhere east of Dallas, TX., I "scooped up" an armadillo while cruising app. 80 MPH at 2AM. Well, 'dillo meat & by-products started cooking on the header collectors, and then the smell entering the cabin through the huge footwell vents. Finally stopped somewhere near Marshall and used a tire iron to scrape off the "larger pieces".

In 1996 the wife & I took a trip through Tennessee. We went to the Jack Daniels distillery. That county is "dry", but they got a special exemption for one year to sell some "Tennessee Bicentenial bottles" of Jack there at the distillery. It is a beautiful bottle so we bought one and put it in the the trunk of our Acura Legend. The next day we toured Nashville, parking in a central lot downtown and walking all day. Sometime during the day, the pewter stopper and cork blew off. Needless to say, you could smell the car from 10 feet away, and the interior was quite potent! I guess we could have been ticketed for an "open container", right then and there!

[jwasbury]

This is funny...I'll play.

The daily driver is a MINI Cooper S. We have two large-ish dogs (60lbs each) who ride in the back (w. seats folded down of course).

We spent a day rock climbing, and the dogs were running loose in the woods. Dogs being dogs, one of them had dined on some rancid poop she found in the woods. You can imagine what a panting poop-breath lab pit bull mix smells like in the close quarters of the MINI. It was so bad that we stopped at a convenience store and got some breath mints for the dog which only resulted in her having minty-poop-breath.

On another occasion that same dog had eaten a nasty old rawhide chew toy she found in my father's yard. Before we hit the road she was making some very stinky farts. Later, on the highway, all was quiet when we were suddenly hit with a smell that had me thinking that the dog had diarrhea in the car! Turned out she had vomited all over my wife's handbag which was sitting in the passenger footwell. We ended up on the shoulder, scooping dog vomit out of my wife's bag on the side of the interstate, at night...cursing out our stupid (but lovable) dog.

Two large dogs in a MINI = excellent chance of stinky car. I've had 'em stuffed in the back of the porsche too (once...only for 5 minutes)

[Peter Zimmermann]

A few years into my career I went to the parking lot to retrieve a first-time in 356 that had a long fix-it list. That particular day saw the thermometer soar just past 100F, and the car had been parked in the sun, with the windows shut, for about three hours. Not expecting anything unusual, I opened the door, crawled in, and then it hit me. One of the worst smells imaginable (and I was on a Destroyer in the US Navy, so you know this was bad!) penetrated my nostrils, and as I bailed out of the car my mind considered a dead body, and other unpleasant situations. After the car aired out for a couple of minutes I approached with caution, sniffed around, and found a center tunnel that was well-lubed with trans oil that had leaked from a bad shift fork seal and saturated the floor. Oh was it bad!

[Porsche_monkey]

1. When I lived in England (twisty roads, manual tranny) my son would puke every 20 minutes on a car ride. We just dressed him in layers and I changed rental cars every two weeks.

2. The carpet glue on my Volvo stinks in hot weather (even ten years on). Smells like garlic and onions. Apparently there was even a recall notice.

[leeb51]

Driving on vacation in '76 911 when I apparently ran over a squirrel. Well, as luck would have it, a part of the poor critter got stuck in the headers. We didn't notice anything until we came out from a rest stop to find a number of people gathered around the car, questioning why it stunk so bad.

Managed to keep lunch down long enough to find a self-serve car wash and clean the remains off with high pressure washer. Thank goodness for rear engine cars....especially P-cars!!

[beamonk]

Several years ago, around my Sophomore year in college, I was home for the summer and we all went to this neighborhood bar just about every night. I ran into a girl who I went to high school with, who was the ringer of all ringers at playing quarters. She would roll the quarter down her nose and plop in in to the shot glass damn near every time. She got me that night on Tequila and i wound up sleeping in the parking lot in my 240Z. During the night, I had obviously puked a couple of times and never got the window fully down. Why I didn't just open the door, well, I guess that is why I slept in the car. I woke up to the blazing Mississippi August sun with the smell of cooking puke with a pounding hangover. I don't drink Tequila anymore!

[Danny_Ocean]

I borrowed Dad's Plymouth Satellite wagon to take two girls to an all-nite skate thing. The girls did more drinking than skating. Afterward, as I was bringing them home, just as I stopped, girl # 1 projectile vomits on the dash. Puke flows along the dash and down the defroster vents. Girl # 2 then "reactionary" vomits...she misses the dash, but soaks the carpet. Embarassed, they bail out and run in to their house. I'm left cleaning up the mess, trying not to myself.

From that time forward, everytime dad turned on the defrosters, you could smell warmed-over puke. I noticed it, but dad never did as he was a chronic smoker...never had a good sense of smell.

30 years later and I'm gagging just thinking about it.

[euro911sc]

hehehe Every time I come in after a drive (damn its been over 3 years) my wife sniffs and says, "You smell like Porsche." I love that smell... old paint mixed with burning oil and a hint of gasoline and spent rubber... mmmmmmnnnnnnnn..... I'm so close to starting my car I can taste (smell is 50% of taste) it!

A few years ago I inherited a Buick from my grandparents. They had taken in a stray cat. It was a really nice cat except some idiot had chopped off its tail. In the process, the same idiot seemed to have affected the cats ability to control his urination... My grandparents used to leave the windows down ... you see where this is going... so I drove this car daily for about a year... and I live in Florida... with the windows closed after a nice long sunny august day at work I arrived home:

Michael enters the house, kisses wife and says, "Hi babe. How was your day?" Wife, with wrinkled nose, emphatically states, "Whoa... You have permission to find a new car...."

I donated the car to a church... it was mint w/ 50k miles on it... I just couldn't get the pee out...

-Michael

[GH85Carrera]

On a fall tour to Arkansas our group was enjoying the foliage and curvy roads. One of the 911 drivers ran over some fresh deer road kill and it spun up and glued the intestines to the heat exchangers. It was baked on in seconds. We made them bring up the rear because no one could stand to drive behind them. They had to drive with no heat and the windows down. We finally found a town with a car wash and got most of the parts off. The owner replaced the heat exchangers to finally kill the smell. He sold the used exchangers to some poor sucker for a good price.

[BeyGon]

While living in Costa Rica, a friend and I were driving my F150 on a HOT afternoon. Air on of course, we were driving through the cane fields and came to a treed area, along the line of trees coming out to the road was a giant Caracara, a big vulture. Just as it got to the road at about pick up high it saw us and made a 90. It was flying right up the road, I thought it was funny and drove right up it's butt. Here was this giant bird flapping it's wings right in front of us, all of a sudden I think I saw the rectum open up and my windshield was covered in some kind of whitish mess. It ran down into the cowl vents, I turned on the wipers and sprayed the window but didn't do much. We had to shut the air off and roll the windows down cause it smelled so bad. I still had about 8 miles to go to get home. We actually scared the $hit out of that bird. I mean really bad smell, they eat dead stuff. Got home and spent an hour or so washing the white stuff off of and out of the truck. Should have had my camera.

[dtw]

#1 Tim Walsh (fellow board member here) bought his first new car, a black GTI. He came into town to hang out one weekend and show off his car. We went to a serious bender my office was holding. I was blotto. Generally I have an iron stomach and rarely vomit. Not this night, for some reason. Must have been the nachos. Anyway, Tim is driving us back to my house and I get caught off guard with 'the reflex'. Tried to warn Tim but it was too late. As he came to a stop and I was frantically trying to get the window down I lost it. Most of it went out the window but a good amount went down the innards of the door and into the cabin.

Hosed it down before stumbling inside for the night. Woke up to an well-deserved headache and spent an hour in the summer heat & humidity cleaning my spew out of the nooks and crannies of Tim's new car. Man, did it reek. Weeks later, the window regulator in that door failed...replaced under warranty. I almost sent the poor tech a case of beer.

#2 I had to spend an August Friday morning touring several hog farms for work (don't ask, LONG story). By some miracle, I had a rental car for the day, as some idiot had broadsided me in a parking lot the week before. When I finished up at the farms, I was oozing pigshiit and ammonia out of every pore. Drove home at 80mph on the interstate with all the windows down, didn't help the car at all. Dropped it at the rental counter VERY fast and got the hell out of there. Had to throw all my clothes in the trash and leave my boots outside for 3 weeks. Went inside, jumped in the shower, scrubbed until I was pink and the hot water ran out. Wait an hour, back in shower, repeat 2 more times. No love. Had reservations that night at an extremely fancy restaurant for my wife's birthday, had to cancel. By the next day, most of it had dissipated. Was at a friend's house Saturday, helping to drop the engine out of his 911. Everything was fine until I started sweating when we actually did the drop, then everyone's faces screw up and they go "WHAT THE F!@#?!?!?". It came out of my pores again when I started perspiring. Took the rest of the weekend and a lot of exercise to sweat it all out. Yuck. Turns my stomach just thinking about the smell. I didn't eat pork for a month after that.

[gregg911]

1985..my first new car, a black on black GTI w/paper plates. I go with friends to some hotel in Newport Beach to watch boxing on a Thursday night. Afterward and after a bunch of Tecate, we go to Casa Maria and they tell us that they are no longer serving. Once of my smart friends reads the hours on the door and informs the host that the sign says that they are in fact still open for dinner. They make the cook reopen the kitchen and serve us all some tasty Mexican food. I made it half way home before I had this incredible urge to burp. I pushed out the burp and realized that it wasn't a burp after all. Before I could get pulled over or even get a window open, that tasty Mexican food was all over my new interior.

I couldn't get that smell out of the car for the entire summer!!!

Word to the wise......If the cooks says the kitchen is closed..it's closed.

[Rick V]

I got 3 good ones.
Back in school I had a friend with a Vega that was as redneck as you can possibly imagine, righ tdown to the slapper bars. Well while out rednecking one night, we hit a skunk, with the left slapperbar. It slid all the way down to the axle housing. We (being a couple of rersorcefull drunks) we started doing backwards circles in a field until we slipped the skunk body off the bar. This worked great, all except for the skunk scallop inside the bar. We used a selfserv carwash for that.
2 79 fullsized pickup, summer night, windows open, drunks on the road, well a bat flew into the truck, smacked the back of the cab and dropped to the floor. We just poped another beer and went on. Parked the truck, completly forgettign about the dead bat in the floorboard. Didn't open the truck again for several days. This was in the middle summer.
3 Had a woman who brought her car in the shop for an interior fan replacement. She had nowhere to live so she was living in her car. Cloth seats, ect. I can almost taste that smell while I am writing this.