Reminds me of my sisters Volkswagen beetle. It's got some material under the leather that smells exactly like crayons. It's impossible to get rid of. Not as bad as cat piss but really strong. Gives me a feeling of nostalgia every time I'm in it haha. Google "Volkswagen smells like crayons" and you'll find a lot of VWs in the early 2000s have the same smell.
I used to sell Volkswagens. This crayon smell is actually common in many German automobiles because the manufacturers fill the doors with wax to help prevent corrosion.
Mmm old Saabs used to have the crayon smell when the glue under the carpets eventually deteriorated. I used to leave a box of crayons in the back to explain it to people. Was quite funny.
My 2000 Saab 9-5 Aero has the crayon smell in it, too. IIRC, it was the glue used to assemble the interior. They changed the process in 2003ish, so more recent Saabs don't have the crayon odor.
My wife has a 2002 9-3 SE has no crayon smell, but she used to have a 1999 Viggen with the crayon smell.
I used to work on VW's in the early 2000's and VW uses really heavy wax on all of the inner body panels to prevent rust. It's thick and nasty and smells very strong (especially in a hot climate). I used get that stuff all over me and it was tough to wash it off.
Sounds like cosmoline. My ex-military 1987 Land Rover Defender was slathered in the stuff, presumably by its previous owner, the British Army. It smells awful and coincidentally, a lot like cat piss. It's nearly impossible to remove, requiring a solvent like diesel fuel or mineral spirits.
Anyhow, back to the topic, I tend to agree with one of the commenters on the Dell forums. This doesn't sound like glue, or preservative, or actual cat piss. This sounds like a defect in the plastics manufacturing process, perhaps a bad batch of some component chemical. Not sure if these laptops came from China but tainted or counterfeit industrial products are common there. It's possible that a sub-contractor or sub-sub-contractor manufactured these plastic pieces and they slipped by QC. I can't imagine a laptop manufacturer even doing "smell testing" on their products and it's easy to see how this might have escaped notice by the assembly line workers, especially if they're working in a factory town with awful air pollution.
There was some type of grease that would ooze out of the drain ports on my fathers 2000 Golf. I never could figure out what it was. was that the same wax?
A friend in college had one of the new beetles and I always found this hilarious since her aspiration was to be an elementary school teacher. Really strange stuff though.
A friend vomited into her cars aircon vent on the dash once while worse for wear. The phrase blowing chunks came to mind when she turned on the aircon a few days later. That car was no longer the chosen transport method for group outings.
Handy tip from the north, if it's cold, cats sometimes get up in the engine area. It might not be a bad idea if you know there are cats about to bang on the hood before starting the car. You might get something worse than the pee otherwise.
It very well may be either a fungal or bacterial growth in the A/C, especially if the odour developed over time. Sometimes it smells bad, sometimes - not, e.g. like a musk. The service can flush and clean the A/C and it's not really expensive as it's a common-ish problem.
I had a 2004 BMW that used to smell like that. I was told it was the glue they used in the car's interior. I loved that crayon smell; it wasn't offensive, just odd.
