Removing smoke smell from car

[Moondust]

Hi, I'm not sure if this is the right place to post this so sorry if not! We've just bought a second hand car which has a horrible cigarette smoke smell. We noticed a faint whiff on the test drive but the saleman assured us that they would clean it before we got it and the smell would go. So on this basis we went ahead with the purchase. The dealer "bombed" it with some sort of cleaner and it was valeted. It smelt of chemicals when we picked it up - we were told this would wear off. Well 4 days on it has worn off but the smoke smell is back worse than it was on the test drive! It's awful! We've contacted the dealer about it and they have said they will pay for it to be "wet cleaned" inside - is this likely to work? Has anyone successfully got rid of smoke smells in a car?

We have the option of returning the car, cancelling the finance etc within 30 days of the purchase but this was the only car in our price range really and other than the horrific smell it's a lovely car.

I'm just wondering if anyone has had this issue before and what you did?

You want to be sure you have a brand new air filter. Before you install it, you should buy a vent fogger for your car and use it without an air filter in.

I would have the dealer clean the car again, use the vent fogger and then put in the air filter and see how it is.

I’d return. Absolutely

and go to another dealer

if they scrimped on that, who knows what other nasties you find

Plus - that smoke must have permeated very very very deeply. I just wouldn’t want to own a car that had been enveloped in cigarette smoke for likely hundreds of hours

Thank you @Aquamarine1029 . How easy is it to change air filters? Is this something I could change myself or something I should ask the dealer to do?

Thanks @Tookeffort81. I am worried about owning a car that has obviously been smoked in. But the dealer has a good reputation so I was hoping they would be reliable with sorting the car out properly.