Chinese Buyers Ding "New Car" Smell As Defect In JD Power Quality Study

It turns out the sweet, leathery smell that American consumers crave in their new cars is provoking winces among China’s emerging motoring class.

Unpleasant interior odors topped the list of complaints by Chinese car buyers for a second straight year in J.D. Power’s China Initial Quality Study, a problem that ranks as the No. 21 grievance among Americans. Chinese consumers griped about bad smell 16 times per 100 vehicles, while buggy voice-recognition systems drew the most complaints among U.S. motorists.

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TheSteve - 10/21/2016 11:32:28 AM

-1 Boost

Let's remember that that "new car" smell is the off-gassing of solvents, adhesives, dies, and other nasty industrial chemicals that aren't exactly beneficial to your health. You're actually inhaling, *breathing* those products' molecules. If someone's house smelled like that you'd tell them to open a window.

The reason why many people like that smell is because of the powerful *association* between it and the great feeling they get when attaining a shiny new car. It's not because those odours, in and of themselves, are pleasant.

Agent009 - 10/21/2016 12:33:50 PM

+2 Boost

Well said... It is interesting to note just how the new car smell has changed over the decades

Vette71 - 10/21/2016 3:05:32 PM

+2 Boost

Nothing could have been as bad as Japanese new cars in the 70s and 80s. They absolutely reeked of plasticizers and plastic mold release chemicals on the surface of their totally plastic interiors.