I would have never rated new car smell as pleasant, quite the contrary, that is the first time I hear this but old cars can't be any better I guess after years of plastic being exposed to high temp. I always assumed the plastic smell of cars to be toxic and always opened the doors for a few minute before driving when I am using a car that has been parked in the sun and would open the windows completely for a little while when driving before starting the aircon so that air is circulating.
Is it ever not toxic? The rank mix of volatile organics has always made me nauseous. I'll take a flight-proven, properly outgassed car any time, thank you very much.
>The researchers employed machine learning techniques to analyze their data.
Interested to know why this was necessary given sensor data correlation with ambient temperature doesn't seem to be a particularly hard problem to solve.