New Car Odor Carefully Scrutinized by Nose-sensitive Engineers

It was a well known fact that car manufacturing companies have employees who testdrive the cars in order to see what can be done to improve them. But Ford has taken the car manufacturing and finishing to anotherlevel. In other words, the manufacturer has put together a team of 5 nose-sensitive engineers who’s job is no other than “sniffing cars.”

Ford’s Central Laboratory’s Polymers, Coatings and Corrosion Section has selected the 5 engineers for their sharp sense of smell in order to establish the odor of interior materials and rating them according to the odor they emit. After the sniffing procedure is complete, the materials get the green line for assembly on the actual car. The nosy engineers have to check the scent all interior finishes from cup holders to airbag covers to floor mats and fabrics.

“Our goal is to eliminate any and all unpleasant odors in our cars. It all comes back to the ownership experience—we want people to enjoy being in their cars, not noticing or worrying about unusual and annoying smells“Once we had a rubber part come through that smelled like cinnamon. Not that cinnamon is an unpleasant smell, it’s just not meant for car parts. We sent it back.” was quoted as saying by CarJunky.com, Sandra Edwards, a laboratory engineer who leads the odor team at Ford.

The sniffed odor is rated from a scale of one to six. One indicating that the odor is is not detachable and six means that the odor is unpleasant. Furthermore, is the smell is not acceptable and does not meets the levels of the scale, the component is sent back to the supplier in order to determine the cause of the smell.