Ford dreams up a way to kill ‘new car smell’

Car companies often tweak their vehicles for different markets in order to comply with regulations or serve varying customer tastes. But Ford is apparently considering a novel change to cars bound for the Chinese market: removing the “new car smell.” Yes, the fresh but sometimes dizzying smell of a brand-new car might be popular in the US, but it’s apparently off-putting in China. More than 10 percent of drivers in the country complain about aggressively smelly new cars, making it a “top industry problem,” Brent Gruber, a senior director at J.D. Power, told the Detroit Free Press. “To put that in context, it is nearly double the problem rate of the second most prevalent problem, excessive fuel consumption.” Ford spelled out its solution... Continue reading…