These Are The Nastiest Messes You’ve Ever Cleaned Out Of Your Car

A mess in a car can be a particularly daunting task to clean. There’s absorbing foams and fabrics, weird corners and neigh-on unreachable spots that make cleaning up something gross a truly daunting task. I asked you earlier this week what kind of awful messes you’ve had to clean out of cars and oh boy, did you deliver. I may never feel confident transporting a gallon of milk in my car again, I certainly want to wrap my car in plastic when my dogs go for a ride and I am forever grateful not to have kids. I definitely expected something worse from the commenter who worked for a rental car company, but at least that answer dispels the myth of the nasty rental car. Here’s the grossest messes you’ve ever cleaned out of a car. Warning, the following reader comments are not for the faint of heart or sensitive of stomach.

1987 Mazda RX-7 Turbo II had been sitting in a pole barn for over 10 years in a small mountain community. By the end of the first summer mice had entered the cowl and chewed through the plastic flap separating the blower motor from the outside air. Having entered the HVAC tunnels they chewed their way into the cabin, nestling into the plush interior. They made their nests on the seats and carpet, under the carpeting, behind the door panels, in-between body panels and even making their way into the rocker panels which were filled with nests. In the winter their nests were insufficient for keeping them warm and they would freeze to death in place. Spring thaw would create a bigger mess of the accumulating mouse corpses, feces and urine. Summer comes around and here comes another round of mouse infestation. This went on year after year after putrefying year.

When I inherited the car someone had vacuumed out the interior and declared it clean. But it smelled of death and decay. Lifting the hood revealed mouse nests and refuse underneath the intercooler. What was once a hood blanket had become a chewed husk of tattered fiber remnants. Everywhere there was filth and decay. Removing the seats from the car and beginning to lift the carpets revealed that the once plush and thick rubber foam of the underlayment was macerated and mixed with mouse droppings, hair, corpses and rodent filth. Gutting the car, scrubbing and spraying with various cleaning mixtures helped a bit, but the stench of death remained. No soul with olfactory bulbs could survive this death trap. I bought a boroscope and began probing in between the metal panels of the body, only to be horrified by the existence of mountains of rodent feces, corpses and nests. I began cleaning out the chassis with ever smaller hoses, cleaning wands and my hands were I could reach and watched a seemingly endless cascade of droppings flow from the drainage ports. I reached in to grab one of the many mouse corpses and actually felt a bite as I latched onto its bony skull and sharp teeth. Even in death these rodents defended their palace. After tens of hours of cleaning I set off a chemical reaction (bio-shocker) in the car with closed windows to destroy all organic matter and smells. This is the substance used in disaster cleanup, crime scenes and where bodies have been left to rot in order to remove odors. It had little effect. So I repeated the bio-shock several times. Since that time four years ago I’ve let the car sit under a cover, outside without windows but drying in the southern california heat. I think it may have finally reached the point where I can begin restoring the interior, but the experience has left perpetual scars on my psyche.

From slowmofo

My 04 Element. Family and I bought one of those 6 packs of chicken thighs from Costco, and just, forgot about it in the back. Sat there for around 5 days, during the California heat waves last year. No one realized till the fifth day when my dad asked why the freezer was empty. Realizing, went to my car and opened the trunk and am greeted by the smell, and sights of flies and maggots coming out of the inflated/popped bags of former chicken. Took me a week of scrubbing and steaming, and ozone generating to get most of the smell out. No one else wanted to get near it. I can still smell bits of the chemicals mixed with the ghosts of rotting chicken every time I turn on the AC, despite changing out the filters.

From John Bacon

My father has a ’95 Cadillac El Dorado ETC in great condition, it’s his retirement car and he takes care of it while also hauling stuff it shouldn’t. A few years ago he decided to get some diesel for an excavator that he was using at the time, and had it loaded in the trunk. Well, something happened on the way back to the excavator, and the trunk, back seat and flooring were entirely soaked in diesel. It was soaked in the leather, the carpets, and smell was enhanced by the summer heat.

The rear seating and carpeting had to be carefully removed and detailed, the car was left out to air for what felt like a few weeks, and my father has a poor sense of smell so I had to constantly sniff out any hint of diesel for his own safety. After a month, it was finally devoid of that diesel smell, and that was the moment that made me realize that we should invest in a truck.

From Alf Enthusiast

Dog vomit, twice.

We have two dogs, one travels great and the other does too until about 10 minutes from our destination, then he proceeds to spill everything he’s eaten since breakfast in our cars. First time it happened was our first trip in my brand new Giulia. He likes to sit in the front passenger seat, and it went between the seat and center console, and into the wireless charger dock in the center console. This was thick, semi-digested dry dog food that made its way into basically every unreachable spot in the car, and every plastic panel seam imaginable. I had to basically wait for it to dry to get the finer bits out and went through a lot of cleaning supplies.

Second time it not only went into the exact same spot in my wife’s car, including all the seatbelt buckle mounting hardware, but her car has ventilated seats that have perforations all the way across. Guess what got clogged up with dog vomit? Yeah, we paid someone to deal with that, best $300 we’ve spent on our cars in a long time.

From Wantsamanuelalpharomero

Vomit. Little kid vomit.

My niece puked in the back seat of my car. The best plan I could come up with was, in order:

finish the drive home (it was only another five minutes)

get her out and cleaned up

open the car doors and let the puke dry out

peel it out like fruit leather

deal with the stuff in the crevices.

This worked remarkably well given that it was a hot summer day and the seats were vinyl. The hard – and seriously disgusting part – was getting the vomit from between the seat cushions and seat back. I had to disassemble the entire rear compartment of the car.

The smell lasted for a month.

From JohnnyWasASchoolBoy

Had to be the mess in my mother-in-law’s Camry. As she aged and became a true hazard on the road, her kids were too chicken to take her car away so it fell on me. Imagine my surprise when I opened the car to find she had gone grocery shopping, apparently weeks if not months ago, and forgotten several bags in the back seat. Cue the bugs, rodent droppings, putrefying meat, decomposing produce. But the milk was the worst, since the jug ruptured as I tried to remove it. I should have just called a tow truck and sent the car straight to the salvage yard.

From nextcar

I don’t know if this qualifies as something I would clean out of a car–it was just cleaning a car–but…

Just out of high school, I worked at a car wash. On the first day of the season that was below freezing, just before closing a guy come in with a one-year-old Trans Am. The car was more dusty than dirty (and only slightly dusty), but nevertheless the owner insisted on two of us dipping towels in soapy water and washing the car down that way. The water on the car was actually freezing as we were “washing” it; before long, it had about a coating of about a quarter inch of ice all over. Needless to say, we were pretty miserable in a short time. We washed the car for about twenty minutes before taking a break to thaw out our hands and speculate about this guy’s mother.

When we returned, the car and customer were gone. To this day I have no idea how he got the door opened with that much ice on it without breaking the frameless door window.

From Joe Stricker

I used to work at Hertz as one of the crew that cleans out cars (VSA was my job title if you want to know). The worst one I had to deal with, there was a lot even though I only worked there for a month, someone left a full bottle of maple syrup open laying down on the seats of a minivan. It took me over 5 minutes to clean that one chair.

From Robert Theriault

It was when we first got our 2002 Toyota Sequoia. The previous owner was a friend of a family friend. She was the typical soccer mom with two teenage boys who always played sports as well as two big dogs. As a result, when we first saw the car, there was dog hair and dried mud everywhere like a county fair petting zoo. Not to mention, the car smelled of what must have been a month’s worth of body and dog odor. Nevertheless, my dad pulled the trigger and bought the car figuring it would still be a simple cleaning. To this day, I have no idea how we survived the drive home. We had our shirts covering our noses the whole time. It took us two to three solid days of shampoo and vacuuming to get every trace of the previous owner’s mess out, and running our washing machine twice to get rid of whatever mess got on our clothes. But we did it, and if you saw our car today, you would never know it had such a big mess. Now, we’re kind of neat freaks when it comes to that car to the point we make it an effort to preserve it as best as possible, like it just came out of the dealer showroom.

From Giantsgiants

One day as I was pulling out the parking garage at work I got this sudden urge to puke. I fought as hard as I could to resist but the train had already left the station. In my panic of trying to stop the car, and decide do I roll down the window or open the door time ran out.

The Taco Bell lunch I had sprayed all over me, the dash, door, seat, and floor mats. I took off my shirt and used it to at least wipe the chunks off the seat. Had to make a 20 minute commute with all 4 windows down. The look on my wife’s face when I walked through the door was priceless. Took me at least 2 hours to clean enough to get the smell out and pick out all the chunks in the dash and window switches on the door. However I did learn the Scrubbing Bubbles is an amazing carpet/upholstery cleaner. No stains whatsoever. Traded in about 6 months later with no evidence anything happened.

From David Walter

I have 3 kids, so I’ve had to clean every bodily function out of the back seats over the years. My shop vac and a carpet cleaner with a really good hose attachment/suction setup were heroes of my garage.

I wasn’t there for this one, but a buddy of mine had a bit too much to drink while out to dinner with his fiance. As she was driving her Forte back to their place, he threw up, but got it in the air vents. Her car smelled like vomit for over a month (in the hottest part of summer) before she traded it in

From cintocrunch1

Wife coming home from grocery one summer stopped short, and a gallon of milk fell over and spilled into the rear carpet.

I tried everything, but no amount of cleaning could get the stench of spoiled milk out.

Eventually spent $1,500 having the entire carpet replaced.

From Kevin

While on vacation, my car was at the detailers and my dog was at the kennel. I picked up both after a week away, and while driving home, doggo vomited roughly a gallon of bile, water, dog food, dog treats, dog toys, and other debris onto my freshly washed rear seats. Luckily, it was liquid enough to run down into the seatbelt holes. After an emergency roadside wipe-up, I disassembled the rear seats at home to get the rest. Then it was returned to the detailers to tackle the overpowering smell of dog vomit. Got rid of the car, kept the dog.

From PostOMatic2000

We have a local specialty that is basically wine in the process of fermentation, and only sold in autumn. It tastes like grapejuice, but it has a kick, which gets stronger as fermentation progresses.

Long story short, you buy the stuff in wine bottles. Which are not corked, because fermentation would drive out the cork quickly. They just put the foil capsule on it so it doesn’t spill when carried. Wife bought two bottles and stood them in the trunk. You can imagine the rest. Jesus, what a stink.

There was also the time when my mother got given a quart of frozen milk (don’t ask) when parting after a visit, which she just kept in her lap for the ride home (I said don’t ask). The milk thawed, then the bag broke, then the milk dissipated into the seat. After some futile attempts at getting the sour odour out, my parents finally bit the bullet and bought a new seat.

From Ara Can

5 gallon bucket of honey. I worked at a bakery and was rushing the honey from one location to a sister store that had run out. 4:30 in the morning. It tipped over and filled up the wayback of my 1st gen 4runner, and completely under the second row seats.

From Rottwagon