How do you get rid of the old car smell?
changed the carpets, cleaned the interior, new seat covers, nice air freshner and it still stinks!!!

I hate going out using my old car... fresh and clean then after you come out of your car you're worst smelling than before you cleaned up!

how did you guys overcome this?

just tell everyone to cover their nose when ur passing?

I reckon it must be the seats themselves if you come out smelling like an old car. remove one, turn it upside down and have a whiff?

240K coupes had reasonable seats for the age of the car - sort of similar to the 240Z's seats. Maybe you could wash them while they are out of the car. I've done that with later model cloth seats, but with a vinyl seat it would be harder... you might have to look into getting them reupholstered and repadded? Or get some new seats.

I even put thick sheep skin covers and also tried a custom synthetic vinyl seat cover and that didnt do the trick.

Someone told me it could be the roof lining as well?

I guess it could be, but there's not much padding behind them to hold smells. Could also be the soundproofing wadding behind those masonite looking boards on the firewall.

I think you might be stuck with it man. One of the pit falls of owning old cars.

new carpet, retrim the doors and dash, new seats should fix it, it fixed mine. it used to have old house carpet and brown vinel, very ugly

Im also not a big fan of the old car smell but mine has a strong smell of fuel which im sure cant be good wherever thats coming from but it also just smells old and i think its hard to get away from that.

Have you tried febreze? I've got rid of some pretty amazing odors with it.

Good thread!

I find that the seats and carpets are the biggest contributors to "old car smell". The odd errant McDonalds French Fry can also be to blame sometimes.

My recently finished Datto smells like a "new car", with the smells from the carpet and seats filling the car with the nice smell of freshly moulded plastic and fabric glue.

So it's not impossible to regain the "new car smell".

Dead animals stuck in the suspension are also bad for smells. As are fishing tackleboxes left in the boot on a hot day.

ps.
My old green datto used to stink. It smelt like a pile of sweaty jocks, left inside a warm room for a few days with no ventilation. Everytime it would rain the carpets would get wet, and the car would seriously smell bad. I used to have to put up with smelling like an old man most of the time.

I'd say between carpet and seats is where it's at, think about 30 years of sitting on vinyl seats in summer in stubbies shorts, becaus ethats all you could get in the 70's that and 30 years of farting, think about it. foam smell

and the back part of the rear seat has that organic fibre in it and if that got damp in the years that could start to rot and smell. get the interior re padded and re-trimmed and you should be okay. good excuse ofr some funky new seats from a late model car.