Ah, that new-car smell.

Remember how refreshing it was to close the door, start the engine and breathe in that distinctive scent of clean carpet and unblemished upholstery?

But, how long did it last - a week, maybe a month - before you toted that morning coffee in with you.

And hit a pothole.

And it spilled on the seat.

And your car was never the same.

Once food or cigarettes enter the inner sanctum of the car, say both car owners and car-cleaning experts, the battle begins. Whether it's a stray french fry or the back seat becomes the dumping ground for your fast-food wrappers, you begin down a slippery slope of crumbs and mysterious smells that are difficult to get rid of.

If you don't stay on top of it, things get out of hand.

"This lady came in one time and she was in the car and getting an oil change and a car wash," said Steve Duron, manager at Diamond Auto Spa in Gainesville. "She said, ‘Just a basic wash,' and I didn't look inside ... We serviced the car and it went through the wash and I went in the front to put a reminder sticker in there, and it looked like 10 boxes of cereal had exploded in the car."

This posed a problem, since the basic wash service included a simple vacuum of the interior, he said.

"Open food, cereal, wrappers, Doritos, probably about 20 cans of Coca-Cola," he added. "We had two 35-gallon trash cans pulled right up beside her doors."

His service adviser, Jay Jones, added that he's seen his share of messy cars, too.

The regulars who come to the car wash tend to keep their cars neat, he said. But every so often, a car will pull up that requires, well, special pricing.

"We have people who wait till they have so much piled in the vehicle they can't really get in it," Jones said. "I've seen people with mounds and mounds of pet hair. It's sticking to their clothes."

The car with pet hair in particular sticks out in Jones' mind as one of the top five worst cars he's ever had to clean.

"Anything from like actually vacuuming it to, we took like masking tape, used lint rollers," he said of the ordeal of trying

to clean the customer's car. "After the car was done it still looked good, but it was still - there was so much stuff."

Juana Espino, a Gainesville mother of two kids, ages 2 and 4, said if her car is dirty, it's usually the kids who are the culprits.

But she has a secret weapon: Bags that hang from the back of the front seats, where she can quickly toss in toys that get left on the floor.

"They're crammed full," she said, adding that while her car isn't so bad, she still has "a bunch of crumbs or lost M&Ms - or toys - under the seats."

For some, it's stopping the mess before it starts that's key.

Gillsville resident Jamie Splawn said her 6-year-old daughter likes to carry toys out of the house, when she's not looking, and stash them in the car.

"Toys, clothes, whatever she can bring out the door without me noticing," she said. "Right now there's about four pretzels crushed on the floor."

But what happens if you want to sell your once shiny-new car, and years of french fries and drinks - or, heaven forbid, smoking - have left the interior in ruins?

Well, the dealer will pull it apart for a thorough cleaning.

"You pull the carpet out and pressure wash the carpet, pressure wash the seat and then put it back in the car with a dehumidifier in the car for a couple of days," said Travis Rushing, owner of Gorilla Auto Sales in Gainesville. "You can get a dirty car pretty clean ... We strip the interior to get them clean. To try to shampoo the carpet in the car, it will look good for a little while, but the stain will start to seep out after a while."

Rushing said he will, on occasion, have to repossess a car, and sometimes he questions what that car owner was thinking.

"I do see some pretty crazy things in cars. I mean, just nasty food, half-eaten hamburgers under the seats, french fries," he said. "A lot of people don't clean out their car ... I get some cars in that, I mean, I would think they're totaled they're so bad. But my detail guy, he gets them clean."

And Jones recommended that if you're going to make a mess in your car, at least keep up with the cleaning.

Often, he said, a customer with an exceptionally dirty car will show up for a detail job and then never return.

"I have a lot of continuous customers, but they come on a monthly or weekly basis. But they're actually here all the time," he said. On the other hand, owners of cars serving as garbage dumps will "spend maybe $100 to clean it up and you never see it again.

"It's kind of like a waste of money if you're not going to stick with the program."

And once that new-car smell is gone, can you ever get it back?

No.

"You can get cigarette smell out of the car for the most part and make it smell better just by cleaning the interior and also changing the cabin filter," Rushing said. "You can do a lot, but you'll never get it back to a new-car smell."