The 2021 Corolla LE sedan in "Blueprint"
On Monday I bought a 2021 Toyota Corolla LE sedan in the "blueprint" paint color, and am struck by the familiar "new car smell" that fills its cabin. This smell joins my list of things that ought to be made into fine fragrance. (Others are the smell of bow rosin, Catholic holy water, and old, musty books.)
Many have asked, what is the mystery substance that makes a new car smell so good? Its very distinctive synthetic aroma, something not encountered anywhere else, is both potent and persistent - the typical new car holds the smell for the first few thousand miles before it disappears. Many have noted over the decades of car buying that when the smell vanishes, it seems to do so abruptly, but then returns under certain extreme weather conditions, like high summer heat.
The straight answer to why new cars smell so good is summed up in three letters: VOC (Volatile Organic Compounds). These are the domain of chemists, and I'm not educated enough to accurately describe what they are, but I can offer a snippet of the short version. VOCs are the man-made synthetic materials that comprise an automobile's interior. These include various glues, plastics, foams, rubbers, and textiles, all factory-made and derived from commercial labs.
When these materials are used, they emit billions of microscopic particles into the air, which is called off-gassing or out-gassing. As one can imagine, a single synthetic material might not yield much of a smell, but eight or nine materials in an enclosed space will create a very noticeable smell. A point of reference for this is new carpeting. Think of a time when you were in a room that had been recently carpeted. It had a smell, right? The synthetic fibers of the carpet, and the rubber foam beneath it, were off-gassing into the room, leaving a relatively pleasant fragrance in the air.
This is what happens in a new car. The factory robots slapped the plastic and rubber parts together, the carpeting was glued down, and the headliner foam was inserted. In such a confined space, it's no wonder a new car smells so strongly of "newness." The off-gassing must be tremendous, at least for the first few weeks of use. Over time the effect dwindles, simply by virtue of the finite nature of off-gassing. After a certain point, the molecules emitted are reduced, and the smell fades.
I believe the fidelity of a new car's smell can be preserved if the car is kept closed and clean for as long as possible, and I'm hoping to maintain it for as long as possible in mine. It's a synthetic smell, and hard to describe - a little sweet, a little musty, a touch of carpet smell mixed with a hint of silly-putty. As for how I feel about the car itself, I can say that so far I'm pleasantly surprised. For a compact car, it's not small; measuring in at 182 inches, the Corolla is only 17.7 inches shorter than the LeSabre. That's less than 1.5 feet. It's only a foot shorter than a 2003 Buick Century, which is also a large car.
Another odd thing about the Corolla is its tuning. It has a cartoonishly small 1.8 L inline 4-banger. In the past these teensy Asian go-kart engines revved pretty dramatically at low speeds, climbing past 2,000 and 3,000 rpms. My Corolla is tuned like it's a 3.8 L V6, revving at 600 rpms in idle (100 lower than my Buick), and only reaching 2,000 rpms at around 68 mph. Accelerating and passing at highway speeds brings it up to around 2,500 - 3,000 rpms, identical to the 3800 series 2. Pretty remarkable. My guess is the CVT, which is compatible with Toyota's newer "Direct Shift" aka "launch gear" - a single gear in the CVT that de-stresses the engine and transmission when accelerating from a dead stop - holds the engine in check. While my car isn't launch-geared, its CVT is a glistening work of art. Toyota has had 20 years of practice making these gear-less transmissions for the Prius.
Bear in mind that I'm not revving my engine much because my car has under 100 miles on it. When a car is that new, it is not advisable to push the drivetrain past 3,000 rpms for the first 1,000 miles. Once the car is properly "broken-in" I'll see what kind of pep it puts out. Right now I'm stuck in "Eco Mode." Otherwise known as little green leaf mode. Not my favorite mode.
I'm not going to recommend a 2021 Toyota Corolla to any of you because every sentient person knows that a Corolla is a good option when it comes to daily commuter cars, and everything has been said already. I'll just say that mine smells really good right now, and I wish that smell would last forever.