Claim: No buyers can be found for a beautiful but cheap car because of the horrible smell that permeates it.
LEGEND
Origins: The story is told of a car sold for a fantastically low price, its only flaw being a persistent disagreeable odor. Someone had met the Grim Reaper in it and the remains were not discovered for many months. The smell clinging to the car was that of decomposed flesh; no amount of washing or scubbing would make it go away. Buyer after buyer was lured by the bargain, but each of them invariably returned the car.
The possible source for this "death car" legend is explained in a 1959 book on folklore:
This Model-A was painted all over with birds and fish, and was quite an eye-catcher. A user-car dealer in Remus sold the car to Clifford Cross, who tried every expedient to eradicate the smell. He reupholstered and fumigated the interior, in vain, and finally had to drive around in midwinter with the windows wide open. At length he turned the car in for junk. I talked with Clifford Cross and his friends who had ridden in the Ford. Here was the first verified case of the Death Car. Did this modern big-city legend originate with an actual incident in a hamlet of two hundred people in a rural Negro community and by the devious ways of folklore spread to Michigan's metropolises, and then to other states? Unlikely as it seems, the evidence from many variants, compared through the historical-geographical method of tracing folktales, calls for an affirmative answer.
In 1953 I was collecting Negro folklore in the tiny community of Mecosta in central Michigan, where a colony of
colored people had Settled on the sand barrens shortly after the Civil War. Called on to speak on folklore
before the crowd that gathered on Old Settlers Day, I related the case of the depreciated Buick, as an instance of contemporary folklore. That evening some of the young fellows pulled me aside and politely explained that the incident had occurred in their town. A white man named Demings, who owned a 1929
Though this would appear to be the beginning of the legend, folklorist Jan Harold Brunvand said of it,
'The Death Car' to a 1938 incident in the small town of Mecosta, Michigan, but later study turned up prototypical elements earlier in Europe."
Though the make of the car continues to update as time marches on
Various homilies can be guessed at as the moral of the tale. "You get what you pay for" and "Don't attempt to profit from another's misfortune" being but two. Gail de Vos provides us with an especially intriguing one:
The offensive smell is perhaps not only the smell of death but that of filthy lucre. The prestigious sports car symbolizes wealth; the legends suggests that the only way working-class people can obtain such a product is if it is defective — in other words, if it stinks.
Barbara "heaven scent" Mikkelson
Sightings: An episode of television's Seinfeld ("The Smelly Car," original air date
Last updated: 12 March 2011
Sources: |
Brunvand, Jan Harold. The Baby Train. New York: W. W. Norton, 1993. ISBN 0-393-31208-9 (p. 133). Brunvand, Jan Harold. The Choking Doberman. New York: W. W. Norton, 1984. ISBN 0-393-30321-7 (pp. 212-213). Brunvand, Jan Harold. The Mexican Pet. New York: W. W. Norton, 1986. ISBN 0-393-30542-2 (pp. 12-13). Brunvand, Jan Harold. The Vanishing Hitchhiker. New York: W. W. Norton, 1981. ISBN 0-393-95169-3 (pp. 20-22). Brunvand, Jan Harold. The Study of American Folklore. New York: W. W. Norton, 1998. ISBN 0-393-97223-2 (p. 208). Czubala, Dionizjusz. "The Death Car; Polish and Russian Examples." FOAFTale News. March 1992 (pp. 2-5). de Vos, Gail. Tales, Rumors and Gossip. Englewood: Libraries Unlimited, 1996. ISBN 1-56308-190-3 (pp. 109-112). Dorson, Richard. American Folklore. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1961 (pp. 250-252). Emrich, Duncan. Folklore on the American Land. Boston: Little, Brown, 1972. ISBN 0-31623-721-3 (p. 338). Smith, Paul. The Book of Nasty Legends. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983. ISBN 0-00-636856-5 (p. 79).
Also told in: |
The Big Book of Urban Legends. New York: Paradox Press, 1994. ISBN 1-56389-165-4 (p. 29).