Just like humans like the feel of an expensive watch around their wrists, the look of a diamond ring on their hand, or a pearl necklace around their necks, a motor car likes to have something nice to wear around its gear stick or rearview mirror.
There is a new adage in the world of luxury living.
Spare the car perfume, ruin the vehicle and the drive.
Learn from it. And pimp up with the best automobile aromas and not-so-common, classy scents. Get your car some cologne. Splash out on gorgeous perfume for your beloved vehicle.
Things come from awful clients. That’s one lesson Barbara Behan and Carrie Hindmarsh took from their time at M&C Saatchi. En route to one particularly tricky customer, they would mentally prepare by spritzing essential oils inside their car: sure, that may not improve the outcome of a meeting, but at least they’d arrive in a less harried mental state.
From this was born their startup, Charabanc: a line of luxury car fragrances. They have been designed to hark back to the halcyon days of motoring (a “char-à-banc” being an open-topped, horse-drawn vehicle, later with an engine), evoke “the atmosphere of adventure”, and be beautiful objects in their own right, comprised of a hand-crafted, stenciled-steel pomander encased in London leather.
Harrods loved the idea, green-lighting the duo’s plans without proof of concept, and 18 “incredibly tough” months later, Charabanc was born. Scent names include Across Pennine Fells (pine, freshly-cut grass, mint), Along the Plain of Castelluccio (lavender, sage, Calabrian bergamot), and The Golden Road to Samarqand (pink pepper, green coffee, cedar wood). Each is also infused with “a different note of leather and wood to evoke the old-fashioned microcosm of a vintage car,” says Behan. “Not just some awful blunt note of pine, something to hang off your rear-view mirror laced with hideous chemicals.”
With people willing to spend small fortunes at Jo Malone and Diptyque reed diffusers to make their homes smell like boutique hotels, why shouldn’t there be something for cars? There is plenty of mileage now in car fragrances. Smells are a very competitive business. There is a lot of perfume-upmanship in the air.
Ours were the first children in our street to smell of ambergris and the first in their class to smell of “Pompelmo” (Italian grapefruit)
The family dog was the first to wear a “Florentine iris” to the park.
I was the first member of my golf club to smell of Tuscan bergamot and butter bushes.
And my wife to use deodorize with something peony. Our car was the first in our street to smell of Capri oranges.
Once, cars smelt of smoke, petrol, feet, children, damp dogs, armpits, last night’s curry or kebab, and other unidentifiable or you-don’t-want-to-know odors.
Now, they smell of upmarket designer perfumes.
Acqua di Parma, since 1916 the symbol of Italian style and sophistication, and Poltrona Frau, is synonymous with top-quality leather handcrafts. Have come out with an Airound collection of car fragrances. Designer GamFratesi is behind the sensory experience which makes you swoon. Even in a snarl-up.
The two historic Italian maisons have combined high-performance leather and unique scented compositions in a circular shape recalling the iconic boxes of Acqua di Parma for a new car fragrance diffuser easily attached to the car’s ventilation grille by magnet. The car’s ventilation system activates cold diffusion of the dispersion of polymer-based alcohol-free and solvent-free fragrance “pearls”.
Nine car smells are available: Luce di Colonia, Buongiorno, La Casa sul Lago, Oh, l’Amore, Aperitivo in Terrazza. Profumi dell’Orto,Arancia di Capri, Fico d’Amalfi and Mirto di Panarea..
Perfect whether you are driving a Lamborghini, Ferrari, Maserati, Alfa Romeo, or a Fiat. But just as good in French cars. Diptyque car fragrance isn’t exclusively for Citreons.
Scents like peppermint are well-known for aiding focus, concentration, and alertness. Lavender is calming. Even for bumper-to-bumper car rage!
Many luxury perfume houses now produce car fragrances and diffusers, But Acqua Di Parma is the only one that whisks you off to sun-drenched, citrus-scented Italian landscapes. And transports you to the gentian fields of the Dolomite mountains.
The UK’s CHARABANC car fragrance collection comes in Racing Green, Signal Red, Midnight Blue, Orchid Black, and London Tan. The diffusers can be hung in front of your car’s A/C vent grill, from the rearview mirror, or placed in the cup holder.
“It is the only entirely British-made, hand-crafted, much more sustainable than most car fragrance inspired by iconic road trips from around the world, “says co-founder, Carrie Hindmarsh. “We take you across the Pennine Fells where resinous Scots Pine suffuses the breeze along with limestone and leaves. Over through the Umbrian hills along the Plain of Castelluccio. As well as tracing Tamburlaine’s chariot tracks on the Silk Road to Samarkand, A journey to Hong Kong’s Tai Mo Shan, and driving through Monument Valley.
“One day, we were discussing scent memories from road trips we had been on, our lightbulb moment happened and the idea of ‘fragrance journeys’ came to mind. A trip through Monument Valley in a big Mustang was inspiring. Venice to Lake Como was like no other. Scents never stop coming. Venice to Trento – spruce intermingled with notes of larch and fir, accentuated by the hovering mountain mist. Driving towards Corrubbio, passing vineyard upon vineyard, a cavalcade of cherry, plum, cranberry, raspberry, and Corvino grape. Then wild iris and roadside lavender followed by the descent towards Lake Como and the fragrance symphony delivered a thrilling finale where lime blossom, geranium, hyacinth, and jasmine danced on the ozone breeze from the spring cool lake!”
The US remains the birthplace of car fragrancing and automobile aroma accenting. In 1952, a milk truck driver in northern New York complained to Julius Sämann about the smell of spilled milk. To address this, Julius combined exceptional fragrances with specialized blotter material and invented the first car air freshener. He gave it the shape of an abstract evergreen tree in memory of his years extracting aromatic oils in Canada’s pine forests. Little Trees car air fresheners are made in Watertown. NY and DeWitt. They are now available in Royal Pine, Caribbean Colada, Vanillaroma, Cinnamon Apple, Cotton Candy, Black Ice, and New Car Scent/ But no Uber. Yet.
You can’t drive anywhere without volatile molecules getting up your nose.
