That "Used Car Smell"
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At Matick Chevrolet in Redford Township, the loaner car coordinator's toughest job isn't keeping track of the 244 loaner cars in its fleet, but rather explaining the no-smoking policy to some customers.
The policy forbids smoking of any kind in the loaner cars. That means tobacco, vaping and pot, the latter of which is becoming more common and is a big problem to eradicate.
"My rental car coordinator said to a customer, 'You can’t smoke pot in the car.' The customer said, 'I can smoke it, weed is legal.' My rental car coordinator said, 'Well, so is drinking, but you can’t drink and drive,'" said Paul Zimmermann, vice president and partner at Matick Automotive, which also owns Matick Toyota in Macomb, Michigan.
Ever since Michigan legalized the recreational use of marijuana in December 2018, many metro Detroit car dealers say the cars they buy, service and loan out are increasingly smelling of that unmistakable repugnant skunky stench that anyone who has ever been to a rock concert knows instantly.
Pot smell is as difficult, if not impossible, to get out as cigarette smoke. It can ding a trade-in's value and destroy a dealer's loaner car. Many dealers now require customers to sign a contract agreeing to not smoke or vape – anything – in a loaner car, or face a hefty $150 to $250 cleaning fee.
At Sellers Buick GMC in Farmington Hills, the proliferating smell of weed in cars is "definitely a problem," said Sam Slaughter, owner of the Buick GMC store and Sellers Subaru in Macomb. "Sometimes people bring their car in for service and my guys don’t even want to get in it because it smells so bad."
At least twice a month, the used cars that the dealership purchases will reek of either cigarette or marijuana smoke, said Jeff Weissman, reconditioning center manager at Sellers Buick GMC.
“For me, cigarette smoke is much worse than marijuana smoke," Weissman said. "I recognize it immediately and it’s disgusting more than anything. But with smoking, there could be ashes in the vehicle and the window glass is yellowed...”
Since weed is now fully legal or decriminalized and allowed for medicinal purposes in all but eight states, demand for The Odor Doctors' services is "through the roof," said Frank Simmons, CEO of The Odor Doctors, a Houston-based car detailing company that specializes in getting nasty smells out of cars.
At least half of the calls they get from dealers across the country are for help to remove the stench of cigarette, marijuana or vaping smoke.
"If you smoke marijuana, cigarettes, vaping ... it’s all in that same general idea. A vapor type product does omit an inorganic odor," Simmons said. "An inorganic smell would be perfume and sometimes people will spray that to mask another odor and it’s really hard to get it out."
He said he has been getting a lot of calls from "high-line dealers who have loaner cars because they used to mask it and now they can’t," Simmons said.
There are other companies that do odor removal such as Master Odor Removal. The Odor Doctors charges dealers a flat fee of $150 per car and consumers $199 to get an odor out. It can usually succeed in under two hours and Simmons guarantees it for 30 days, he said. About 1% of the time they have to redo it, he said.
