Was a Certain Seinfeld Episode Based on This Michigan Incident?

If you were a fan of TV’s “Seinfeld”, you may recall an episode where his car inherited a bad odor, and no matter how much disinfectant he used, or how many times he sent it to a professional cleaner, that smell of B.O. could not be removed. Well, whether that episode was based on a true story or not, that same thing happened here in Michigan – except the smell was not of body odor – it was the smell of rotting flesh.

The story takes place in Mecosta in the Michigan county of the same name.

In 1938, a man bought a 1929 Ford Model A, as a way to impress a lady friend. The problem was, he spent all that cash in order to win the affections of a female that had no interest in him. After quarreling during a night out, she let him know her true feelings, and that was it – he decided to end it all – and use his new Model A to carry out his death wish.

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He drove out to a deserted country road where he pulled over into the bushes to hide from sight and used the auto’s carbon monoxide fumes to inhale through a tube and poison himself to death. Being out where hardly anyone else drove thru, it took two months before his body was discovered by a hunter. In that time, the auto had absorbed the smell of the rotting corpse and was delivered to a car dealer where it was put on sale for a ridiculously low price.

After being sold, the new owner realized why the car was so cheap. Try as he might, with all sorts of cleaners, cleansers, scrubs, disinfectants, detergents, alcohol-based liquids, you name it..... the smell just wouldn’t go away. After going through a few different owners, it was finally taken to a junkyard and scrapped.