Nostalgic garage smell

[jdallan]

Maybe nobody will know what I'm talking about but can anyone remember the smell associated with some private garages many years ago? To me it was a warm, comforting amalgam of leather, rubber, car polish (probably the old yellow Simonize), petrol, creosote and old railway sleepers used for flooring. I can remember my father's and my grandfather's garages smelling like that and as a youngster I just took it for granted. Nowadays with the amount of plastics and modern materials used in cars it seems to have gone. Very occasionally when I go into my garage I think I can almost catch the smell but it soon disappears. If it could be reproduced and sold in spray cans I'd place a standing order!

Sorry for rambling on but I'm sitting looking at the rain pouring down and letting nostalgia take hold! (Mind you, nostalgia's not what it used to be.)

Jim

 

[Westoe]

Yes, Yes, Yes - showrooms in the sixties had that very smell - you just took me back 50 years!!
My father bought Anothony Newley's Sunbeam Rapier when I was a young lad and that stunck of leather - and class. I would roll back those years anytime - great times.

 

[flecc]

Yes, well remembered when I was in the trade in the 1950s. Oil was a major factor in the smell combination, both the oil itself and the much larger amounts that cars used to burn. Today's synthetics just don't smell the same and today's engines burn far less of it.
.

 

[Kuorider]

Let's have more of your memories.
I had a Saturday job when 15 in a Jaguar garage. I was first in to let the night watchman home, so for a while I had this silent vast space to myself. Rows of gleaming new Mk 1 jags with an occasional XK 120 in between, standing in silent rows. Open a door and slip on to the aromatic cold leather with the mix of wood and new carpet mixed in, looking down that long XK bonnet, gripping the big black wheel . Hear the Boss arriving and nip out quick closing the door quietly before being spotted. The big Tecalemit air compressor had a smell all of it's own as it wheezed it to life. Open the big green oil cabinet dropping the heavy sliding front panel emblazoned 'The Masterpiece in oils' and catching the unmistakeable sweet tang of Castrol. These and the sharp smell of charging batteries, the rubber of paper wrapped RS5 Dunlops and gasping for breath in the paint shop, the alloy and oil tinged blast of hot air when opening a Jag bonnet accompanied by the tick of cooling metal have never left me.

 

[EddiePJ]

I know exactly what you mean by the smell, and despite being a mere 49yrs old easily recollect it, plus that of Castrol R or R40. Now there is a smell that is never to be forgotten.

A friend of mine recently bought a new in box, 1950's compression tester via Ebay America. That box has exactly the smell that you describe, and it instantly takes you back to your childhood. I almost begged him not to use it.

One smell that I hate to be reminded of is burnt Avgas and 2t oil. Sitting in the holding area and start line before a GP250 race would almost make me want to puke my guts up. Not only are you already wound up and nervous, you also had that eye watering smell to contend with as well. That is one smell that I don't miss.

 

[jdallan]

Further to my first post, in the late '60s/early ’70s I accompanied a beekeeper friend who looked after hives for someone in a big house in St Andrews. While we were there we had to go into the big house garage for something or other. The garage would have accommodated at least 4 cars and included the most beautiful powder blue Citroen DS. What impressed me most was the smell I have already described - it was almost overpowering and I had to be dragged away! They say scent is a potent memory stimulus and I well believe it.

Jim

 

[Kuorider]

Anyone remember Woolworth's smell ? The oil used on the bare wood floors was the source. The smell of foil lined empty tea chests ? Fresh sawdust on the Butcher's floor. Can you smell French vineyards on the summer wind rippling the long South Downs grass ?

 

[pjtives]

This thread has brought back a few memories for me too, the sorting office where I would go to see my dad at work. The air had the distinctive smell of sisal (no rubber bands) and letter sacks. Sometimes I would sit or lay on a pile of sacks, I can still smell it if I concerntrate. Petrol does not smell (or taste) like it did when I was a lad with my first motorbike, but I can remember the local "Rope and Twine Company" wooden floors, rope, sacks, tinware and basket ware - another place that flled the senses. And finally Old Mr Baines the cobbler ( RIP) one of the nicest "old people" I ever knew , more exotic smells in his little shop. I am glad I am not the only weird one around

 

[Gordon Stewart]

For me, it is the smell of big old bus garages. My Father was a depot controller in a bus garage and I spend my youth playing there. The smell of the ground in oil and diesel on the worn concrete floor mixed with swarfega.

 

[SteveRuss]

I was at the Beaulieu motor museum recently and there are all manner of those sorts of smells in there.

One that would interest you is Jack Tucker's garage, which is a decent attempt at a really old mechanics garage. I spent a while just gazing around in there..

 

[Lardo]

Swarfega. For me that is such a comforting smell!