Handling, ride, MPG… We should also rate ‘smell’ in new car reviews

In a typical Autocar review, we will discuss performance, ride, handling, ergonomics, electronic systems and a number of other standard things for a modern car. What doesn’t regularly feature in our tests is smells. Why is this?

One possible reason we don’t talk about smells very much is because they’re quite difficult to convey. It’s impossible to show in pictures or even video and the English language just doesn’t have a particularly extensive olfactory vocabulary. You quickly have to resort to metaphor and so it quickly degenerates into a sort of wine tasting session.

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Then again, the same hasn’t stopped generations of motoring writers from developing a lingo to describe a car’s ride comfort. Is an ‘overdamped, wooden ride’ any more precise or relevant a description than ‘overtones of red fruit with a finish of bergamot’? You tell me.

The thing is, smells can be incredibly evocative and colour one’s enjoyment of a car. I was reminded of this because the interiors of the cars I’ve been driving this week have all been unusually fragrant.

You might very well buy a car because its engine sounds great. Would you buy a car because it smells nice? Maybe, but I know I would definitely avoid certain cars for their interior odours.

The Geely EX2 is a perfectly worthy electric hatchback, if a bit too expensive, given that it’s rather average across the board. Like quite a few other Chinese cars, though, its interior gives off a very strong, chemical smell of melting vinyl, which is amplified to a troubling pungency when the car has been left in the sun for a while.

It’s a smell that lingers in your clothes, too. Even though I only drove the car for two hours or so, I caught a whiff of it when I was at home that evening watching TV.

I recall driving a BYD Atto 3 for a week and the smell being so bad that I considered leaving it at Millbrook proving ground after I’d done the performance testing and taking the train home.

I’ve talked to colleagues about this, and it’s clearly a very personal issue, because some vehemently agreed with me whereas others just shrugged. I can pretty objectively say whether a car rides well or not, but how does one give a star rating to the off-gassing of interior plastics?

The personal element was driven home first by the Nissan X-Trail. Most new cars from ‘legacy’ manufacturers don’t really smell any more, but this one instantly took me back to my aunt’s old Nissan Almera.

The X-Trail’s smell was very subtle. It must have been more than 20 years since I sat in that Almera. And even then it can’t have been for long, because I have no particular recollection of it. Yet the X-Trail instantly fired up the memory by smelling subtly but unmistakably of Nissan. I even struggle to describe it. Faintly musty, I guess? Not unpleasant.

The real sensory overload (a welcome one, I hasten to add) was my 1990 BMW 3 Series, which really hits you with characteristic ‘old BMW’ perfume-one that calls forth many happy memories in my parents’ 320i that I grew up in and my first car, a 316i.

It’s a huge memory bomb that I enjoy every time I drive the car and which other people who have less of a connection to old BMWs seem to react positively to as well.

If a well-meaning car wash attendant were to place a Magic Tree inside it, there’s a distinct possibility that I might get violent.

The irony is that emissions from interior plastics of the volatile organic compounds that make up smells are much more tightly regulated now than they were back in the day, so my beloved classic is probably more likely to give me cancer than the Geely, even though the latter gives me an instant reflex of thinking it can’t be healthy and I should get out as soon as I can.

Nostalgia is one hell of a drug. I’d give it five stars. But it won’t make it into the road test any time soon, because it’s just too subjective.

Anyway, I’d like to go back to talking about spring rates and LFP batteries now, because I’ve typed ‘smell’ too many times for comfort….