The scent of a Mazda

People like to think of themselves as rational beings. Until, somewhere, someone steps into the lift wearing the same perfume as a former great love. Two breaths later, you’re 25 again, it’s summer, somewhere by the sea – and your rational mind is left to fend for itself as it tries to make sense of the situation.

Our nose has its own quirks, after all.

Yet the sense of smell tends to lead a rather inconspicuous existence in our perception. We talk about beautiful images, good sound, pleasant fabrics and skilful lighting. We usually only talk about smells when they are a nuisance. You can close your eyes, and you can at least cover your ears to some extent. Not smelling something is more difficult, as long as you want to keep breathing.

Humans have around 400 different types of olfactory receptors. A scent does not activate just one of these; different molecules produce patterns of activity, and it is from the interplay of these that our brain constructs a smell.

The commonly held belief that a smell takes a secret shortcut past the mind is, scientifically speaking, rather romantic. What is true, however, is that smell, touch and memory are remarkably intertwined.

Almost everyone knows this from personal experience. The smell of a cellar can transport you back to your parents’ home, sun cream to a holiday, and a particular meal to your grandmother’s kitchen. There is even a name for this phenomenon: the Proust effect. It is named after Marcel Proust’s famous madeleine, the scent and taste of which evoke a childhood world the narrator had believed to be lost.

Psychological studies confirm this: smells are among the most powerful triggers of autobiographical memories. These often stretch far back in time and are astonishingly intense emotionally.

Perhaps that is precisely what makes the sense of smell so special: we look at a picture; we experience a smell.

And that brings us to the car – and its interior.

Hardly any other everyday object gets as close to us over the years as a car. We sit in it, touch it constantly and spend hours in a comparatively small, enclosed space. We drive it to work and on holiday, take the children to school, sit in traffic jams, eat things in it that weren’t meant to be eaten there, and occasionally carry sports bags whose olfactory contribution to the overall experience is best left unmentioned.

A car accumulates life.

And smells.

Added to this are the materials of the vehicle itself: seats, carpets, plastics, textiles, leather, adhesives and paints. What we perceive when we get in is the result of a rather complex mixture.

So why, of all things, should the air inside the car be considered insignificant? Especially as the car has long since given rise to one of its most famous smells: the smell of a new car.

For generations of motorists, it has smelled of something special: of newness, of the untouched, and perhaps even a touch of pride. From a chemical perspective, the matter is less poetic. The typical smell of a new car arises largely from volatile organic compounds emitted by the various materials in the interior. So perhaps the world’s most famous car scent was never actually intended to be a scent at all.

And this is precisely where the real questions begin.

For what happens when a car’s smell is no longer merely the result of its manufacture? When designers begin to consciously shape this aspect of the interior too? And indeed: can you smell a brand?

Nicola Farina’s professional work centres on precisely this question. He is a perfumer and fragrance expert at Nose & Partner. The company develops bespoke fragrance compositions for brands and spaces. In his laboratory, he has 2,000 to 3,000 materials at his disposal; in his day-to-day work, he uses around 200 to 300 of them. A new composition is created through mixing, testing and adjustments; 40 or 50 attempts are not uncommon, and sometimes the development process takes a year.

Perfumers speak of top, heart and base notes. Some impressions are immediately apparent and fade quickly, whilst others only develop over time and linger.

Seen in this light, the parallel with car design is not so far-fetched after all. A car, too, reveals itself in layers. First we see its silhouette. Then we discover surfaces, materials and details. Finally, there are those characteristics that only become apparent after hours or days.

Farina therefore describes scent as an invisible design layer. At its best, it can become a kind of olfactory signature – a distinguishing feature that does not need to be seen or heard. Marketing departments like to use the term ‘olfactory logo’ for this. It sounds a bit as if even the nose might soon need a corporate design manual. However, the idea isn’t entirely far-fetched.

Hotels, shops and fashion brands have long been using signature room fragrances. A scent can make a room seem warmer, fresher or more familiar. And because smells are so deeply ingrained in our memories, it stands to reason that a brand can also become part of that experience.

There’s just one problem: noses – as we’ve already hinted at – are rather fickle.

What smells wonderfully of wood and nature to one person might remind another of an old cupboard. A floral scent can be elegant or smell like a hotel lobby. On top of that, there are cultural differences. Scent preferences vary considerably from region to region. That is precisely what makes a globally effective scent signature so complicated. The art, therefore, probably lies less in making a car smell as distinctively as possible. A good scent should behave more like good lighting: you perceive its effect without constantly thinking about its presence.

So, what does a Mazda smell like, for example?

The Japanese brand has long been exploring the question of how design can be perceived emotionally. Its design language, Kodo – ‘Soul of Motion’ – seeks to make movement visible even when a car is stationary. Japanese design concepts such as ‘Ma’ also play a role: the deliberately left space between things. ‘Kaichou’ deals with the interplay of different materials and surfaces, whilst ‘Komorebi’ focuses on light and shadow.

In collaboration with Shiseido, the brand developed ‘SOUL of MOTION’, a perfume intended to translate the Kodo design philosophy into scent. The joint project even won a gold iF Design Award in 2017 for the design of the bottle.

In the fragrance composition, wood, rose and leather were combined with lime and blackcurrant, complemented by a metallic note intended to evoke material and movement. Of course, you’d have to want to do it in the first place to encapsulate a car design philosophy in a perfume bottle.

The question of whether Kodo actually has to smell of rose or blackcurrant is of less importance. What’s more appealing is the idea behind it: might it one day even be possible to recognise which make of car you’re sitting in with your eyes closed?

With the new Mazda CX-6e, this concept takes on yet another dimension.

The 4.85-metre-long electric SUV certainly makes a technically confident impression. A 78-kWh LFP battery delivers a range of up to 484 kilometres according to WLTP, whilst the electric motor produces a maximum of 190 kW or 258 PS and drives the rear wheels. It goes from 0 to 100 km/h in 7.9 seconds.

Right, fair enough. But to our ears, these figures are largely meaningless. What’s more revealing is what’s missing.

The powertrain is quiet. Very quiet. The electric motor largely fades from auditory awareness, and suddenly things that an internal combustion engine tends to drown out come to the fore: road noise, wind, the workings of the suspension – and the atmosphere of the cabin itself.

Electric mobility may therefore not only be changing the technical architecture of the car; it is also shifting the balance of our senses. For decades, the engine was one of the main protagonists of the motoring experience. You could hear it, feel its vibrations and, after a long drive, sometimes even catch a whiff of oil, petrol or hot machinery.

And when one element becomes quieter, others can take centre stage.

Light. Materials. Surfaces. Acoustics. Temperature – and scent.

This fits astonishingly well with the interior of the CX-6e. Although a 26.45-inch-wide display spans much of the dashboard and a head-up display also provides information, the cockpit feels comparatively calm and uncluttered. Technology is abundant, but it isn’t meant to completely dominate the space.

This is where the smarter future of car scents comes into play. Not perfume on wheels. No cloud of scent that shouts “premium” the moment you open the door. And presumably not a menu option between driving mode and ambient lighting with the choices ‘Sport’, ‘Luxury’ and ‘Forest Floor’ either.

It’s about something more subtle: the question of how a space feels when we spend a lot of time in it. You open the door. Get in. Take a breath.

And sooner or later, we ask ourselves whether what makes a Mazda’s scent so special is, in the end, not that we consciously recognise it.

It might be enough if, at some point, we simply recognise it.