Car smells!!!!

We had a similar problem smell...it was like someone had been sick...turns out it was something to do with the air conditioning

sorry about the typos!

You could try putting a saucer full of og bicarbonate of soda into the car when it is standing closed up. Bicarb gets rid of most unpleasant smells.

Apart from this you do need someone who can crawl around the car and help to check whether the carpets are wet and dry them with a hair dryer if you can't remove them from the car.

I agree it sounds like the air con. If you don't run the A/c all the time, you get mould smells from it. It's good practice to keep it on all the time to circulate the gas.

I had a leak a few weeks ago, the driver footwell was saturated! Rang my garage, and he immediately said he thought it was the windscreen seal, he'd had a few others to deal with recently, so I got it done. Dried out the footwell with one of those dehumidifier packs (from Halfords) which took a few weeks, but seems to have done the trick.

I had this once, the screen wash was actually leaking in to carpet not a nice smell

This happened to me!!! It stank!!!
My mother picked up sometimg in the pound shop - like a bag of little foam balls in a net that suck in damp - kind of an anti humidifier. I’ll ask her if she knows what it was called. It did the trick after 3 bags - they actually get heavy with all the invisible moisture they absorb.

It sounds to me that your air conditioning unit is not working and is retaining stale air and water. Try turning it on full and driving for a while with all the windows open to get rid of the smell. You might need a warm coat on though!

Cars in general smell differently to years ago. In the 60's my pa-in-law had an Austin Princess and the leather seating was all you could smell. SiL had a Humber Super Snipe and her car was the same with the interior and its smell of leather.
I've never smelled the like since.

Even my old dad's Standard Vanguard had that leathery smell to it.

Henetha
Me too and only when finding mouse droppings realised that one or maybe more had met their fate inside my vehicle.It took a while with open windows and lots of air fresheners for this nauseating smell to disperse.

Buy or hire a dehumidifier if you can plug it in safely to get the initial excess moisture out of the car.
I bought 2 silica gel packs (from Amazon or eBay) for my car (it has a drain for the roof that blocks and backs up, putting water into the boot if it has been raining hard). I have one in the boot and one on the rear parcel shelf. Works a treat.
They are re-usable, dry them out in the microwave.

You could try putting a "de-mister/de-humidifier" pack into the car. (Lakeland Ltd do a small white one, which we find works wonders with any damp.) Just leave it on the dashboard every night. When the crystals in its little window turn white, you simply "refresh" it in the microwave. No damp windscreen, even on damp mornings.

Mine did, and I found that leaves were blocking vents just under the windscreen

I read about how a sock filled with cat litter will dry up your car and stop condensation - I'm going to try it this winter .
Maybe you could try an electric dehumidier if it was practicable ?

There are some damp and odour absorber pads on Amazon for cars etc

My car had a terrible smell once, a while back. It turned out to be a dead mouse.

Even clean water can make carpet smell. We had a Central Heating engineer once who flooded the bathroom with clean water after forgetting he had turned the taps on full pelt to test the water supply. The carpet we had in there then was absolutely saturated. It was impossible to mop it all up and even with the radiators on after a couple of days it absolutely stank - the most vile smell imaginable like something had died in there.
There was also one occasion dh knocked over a flask of milky tea in the boot of the car (don't ask) and although we mopped up straight away it smelt off for some years.

Could milk have been spilled?

Spare a thought for me - I woke up this morning/ looked out of my window and saw one of my car windows wide open - it rained all night / so you can imagine !!! No sun today / if not I could have opened the doors and let the sun dry it ?

My daughters had the same smell and it was the Air Con. The mechanics sorted it when it went in for a service

Leaks can be very hard indeed to find, on one of the car programs they used a special smoke bomb inside the car, the leak was a door seal in that case but it did show the leak up very quickly.
One very common cause is the drain holes blocked with leaves at the bottom of the windscreen

Once you have everything dried out, try putting a fabric softener refill sachet in the car - it's the best deodoriser I know.

When it happened to me it was the seal around the windscreen. Water was sleeping in and soaking the carpet. Could you get someone with more agility to lift the carpets and have a look underneath? If there is damp anywhere other than where the water was spilled or close by then best get a garage to have a look. If it is from the spillage and it’s possible take the damp carpet out and let it dry out of the car, hopefully it will be smell free eventually and you can have it put back. This sounds like hassle you don’t need lucky, hope it disappears quickly.

You may need to have your air con checked. There could be a leak in the heating system and the two are linked. A good garage will recognise the smell if that's the problem.

I have a musty smell in the car too. Haven't got around to looking for source yet- also suspect spilled water but carpets don't feel wet. Maybe it's the damp weather at the moment?

Have the back windows got a tiny gap at the top?
One car I had once used to always mist up inside and I found the rear windows used to go down, presumably from vibration.