How Do I Remove Car Odor?

[Mainiac]

You can take the carpet out. It takes a few tools, screwdriver and ratchets. You might need a torx socket to get the seats out. It's not hard, just takes patience and a few hours of time. You might need a service manual or there are a lot of forums online that will have the procedure detailed.

Vue is an SUV with a center console, so it might be a bit difficult to do this.


I've done this to a sedan and truck. I take the carpet out, soak it in soapy water a day or so, then scrub the hell out of it with a brush, rinse lightly and repeating scrub/soap. Hang it up and rinse completely. Let it drip dry for a couple days. While the carpet is out you can clean up the gunk that's in the foot-wells of your vehicle (you'd be surpised how nasty it can be). Yes, it's work, but you end up with carpet that looks and smells brand new for zero dollars.

[Chmpy]

It seems like most of your solutions are to add more shit to your carpet. Febreze doesn't clean anything, it basically just makes a very thin chemical shell that traps the odor (until it disintegrates or gets wet).
You need to use something like soap and water which actually cleans (soap is a surfactant which is a long string-like molecule with a hydrophilic head and a hydrophobic tail, so while the head is wiggling around having fun in water, the tail is trying to bury itself in anything else (dirt, grease, old-ice-cream particles) which comes loose from whatever it is attached to (your carpet) when enough of the hydrophobic tails bury themselves in it or when there are a few attached and everything gets agitated. Rinse the soapy solution away and there go the unwanted particles.)
If you can't (or don't want to) remove your carpet to properly wash and rinse it a few times with an ordinary soap, I would suggest using some Resolve carpet cleaner, it does wonders. Hope this helps.