Generally we focus on different angles, heritage or the performance of a car, but today I want to talk about the smell. Strange? No, in three separate conversations with different groups of enthusiasts, the smell of a particular run of car has come up. Now, my wife attributes it to the degradation of “horrible 1980s plastics” and more than likely she’s right. That warm and fuzzy feeling that you get – let’s call it ‘Old Car Smell’ – is probably giving you some type of unbeatable cancer. But do we love it? You bet. Over the summer when my friend Tom dropped off the 1987.5 Coupe GT, opening the door welcomed me into the exact same smell of my 1986 Coupe. And the same thing happened when I bought the M3; popping open the door revealed nearly the same scent as I recall my father’s M5 having the first time I got in. Not to be outdone, recently we posted a E500 and the comments veered off from talking about the typical attributes of the super sedan to the particular smell of the W124. And, oddly, when pondering this E320 coupe, the first reaction I had was that of wondering what it smelled like inside…
