There are probably dozens or hundreds of scents that can trigger some of my memories, but I'll write one that I like, and is a bit silly.
When I was little, my best friend from elementary school and I often played in my yard. it often happened that we were there when my father returned from work and parked the car.
It was a blue Trabant 601 that was produced in Zwickau (what was then East Germany). Plastic creature from a car with two doors, gearbox next to the steering wheel with 4 speeds and a two-stroke engine.
The two of us smarties loved the smell his engine gave off when it burned fuel.
We often knew to stand behind the car and smell the exhaust gases of the engine, mixed with a large amount of air (because if there was no air, there would be no two of us 😅).
That "smell" was accompanied by the specific sound of a two-stroke engine...
And that's why the sound of a chainsaw or a grass trimmer and the smell of burnt fuel brought me back to that memory of my childhood and playing with my friend. Which I hear and smell when the employees in the communal, urban greenery, rearrange the parks in my neighborhood.
The old blue Trabant smell, can't say I've had the pleasure of smelling it but I understand the point.
You've probably never had the chance to see such a car (you from Australia).
Just like the Wartburg, an East German vehicle.
But you must have had the opportunity to see a Volkswagen Käfer (VW Beetle), which was produced in many more copies all over the world.
But the Beetle did not have a two-stroke engine, unlike the Trabant and Wartburg 🙂
I've seen them, on TV and there's one or two at car shows now and then, not on the roads as they don't comply with the ADR (Australian Design Rule) so were never brought into the country for sale.
As for the VW Beetle, I've owned a few.
If I were to ask, they wouldn't be approved for production and use on the streets even by the DDR (Duskobgd Design Rule) 😁
Yep, rubbish from what I've heard.