PETROLHEAD – from Mach-Eau to now

A few years ago, we were tasked by Ford to create the smell of classic cars. They were launching a new electric Mustang, and their marketing and PR team thought it would be a good idea to bottle the smell of petrol.

Since most of the components that make petrol forecourts so enticing are not good for skin contact, that meant using some artistic license. We had a few weeks to develop the fragrance, get it bottled and ready for the team to show at Goodwood Festival of Speed – normally a fragrance development takes months. Pia had just finished reading Harold McGee’s Nose Dive: A Field Guide to the World’s Smells, which had sections on industrial smells like the interiors of cars (benzaldehyde), tyres (para-cresol), which formed key aspects of the fragrance. She also included a huge amount of ginger oil, which at high doses starts to smell like rubber.

But it was a popular concept, went somewhat viral in traditional press, and car enthusiasts could only get hold of a 7.5ml bottle as a gift with purchase when they bought the actual car. Wild. We’ve had people emailing us over the years, desperate to get their noses on it.

When it came to PETROLHEAD, we wanted to move it along. So Pia took the concept and built on it, adding more petrol-y materials (no violet leaf – she was keeping it ‘safe for Nick’), modernising the amber effect that sat at the heart of the original Mach-Eau and adding more of a fougère structure (lavender-coumarin) in the background. The result is a fragrance that smells like rubber on tarmac, classic leather interiors, wooden dashboards, a touch of petrol, and the driver.

PETROLHEAD is for anyone that loves the smell of classic cars. And it’s incredibly wearable. Someone described it to us as ‘smelling of Hell’s Angels’ – and we couldn’t agree more.