I just bought an '07 EX sedan,black w/grey interior,24K for $17,500.I chos to just deal with what appard to be a mild smell of cigarettes.$%^&*( This was not smart! NOBODY seems to offer great results.I've been advisedto get it detailed,use Febreeze,Vamoos etc. but nobody is very optimistic.Well,I am going to just go ahead and trade it back foranother black '07 sedan EXwith 12K for $18,500.Any thoughts? I just can't stand it every darn time I go towards my car I'm getting tickd off anticipating the stink.


On a positive note;it's my first Civic and it handles great!I've had a '95 and '03 Accord.I am sold on Civics despite this one's smell.Grrrr...

 

I found a link on google, here:

http://www.getridofthings.com/get-ri...moke-smell.htm

The things I'd try in order of easiest to hardest:

1. Leave all the windows down and if possible, d/c the battery and open all the doors. Let your car sit like this for a day or two. A garage might be the only feasible place for this. Just as an extra measure, I'd take all the rugs out while doing this.

2. Cover all of the carpet/cloth interior with baking soda. Again, leave it like this for a couple of days and then vacuum it all up.

3. Take out the rugs and shampoo them or steam clean them.

4. Get a handheld steam cleaner and steam clean the cloth surfaces in your car (except for the interior upholstry on the roof and walls of your car, as they'll be mounted with glue). Be sure to use (a) distilled water to keep the steam cleaner tidy, (b) dry rags to wipe clean the areas that you've blasted with steam, and (c) gloves that'll keep you from getting steam burned. I have a handheld steam cleaner from harbor freight that i bought on sale for around 30 bucks. It's very small and it'd take about 3 hours to steam clean an entire car's interior.

I guess if you start with 1 and work your way down, you can stop when you decide that the next item is too much effort for you (or if one of the previous numbers did the job). Another suggestion on that page was to put coffee grinds in your car, but that'll just leave your car smelling like coffee.

 

Neutra-Air
I work for a rental car company now and we(andour heavy detailers)use neutra-Air.
Spray down your seats, head liner, etc.
Spray it down acouple times, first time leave the windows up, and run your air with the "recycling" thing.
Then after doing that for awhile, spray it down again, put down the windows and let it sit.

And if you feel the need go ahead and use carpet shampoo as well, depending on how bad it is

 

When I bought my car, the kid who owned it before me was a heavy smoker. He never cleaned the windows on the inside so there was a nasty brown film on all of the windows as well as on any plastic trim pieces in the car....Not to mention the stench of ciggarettes. I repeatedly sprayed my interior over the course of about a week or so with febreeze and now you can't even tell that a smoker owned the car, aside from a couple small ciggarette burns in two of the seats.

 

You can def. get the smell out with other products as mentioned and with some elbow brease here and there. Def won;t be able to get that out with Febreeze, that's commercial stuff, if it worked wonders once then nobody is going to buy it again and again.

 

Just steam clean all the fabrics in the car. Remove the seats and get under there too, as well as attack the headliner.

After than at some fabric refresher and air neutralizer, you'll be good to go.


I dont konw how a car that new could smell that bad. I have smoked in all my cars and when it came time to sell, the buyers were none the wiser. I actually TOLD the last guy that I was a smoker, and his reply was "well at least you didn't actually smoke IN the car."

People need to learn how to take care of their things

 

auto febreeze

spray a lot on all fabric in the car...including the headliner, and keep the car closed for an hour.

then open the windows for an hour to let it air out.

then spray lightly again, keep the windows closed.

maybe try that a few times, works for me when i detail mine....

 

then you go smoke again you chimney

 

yes but then it smells fresh

 

A hearty thanks to you all!

I just got a call from Carmax.They actually honored my request to have an out of state Civic transfered and WAVED the transer fee!!! This is because,as I pointed out to them,I was misinformed by Carmax that the car I bought as NOT a smoker's car.Their fault so I am going to at least check out basically the same black '07 sedan with half the milage on it.It will cost me a grand more but I'll be getting another 24K +/- warranty.Oh well,I have to at last check it out!