Car talk with magnificent detours.
Smith and Sniff pairs sharp car knowledge with the feeling of two friends talking themselves into beautifully unnecessary detours. A sad-faced Mercedes Actros, a rescued Honda Jazz, or a dashboard battery-voltage readout can become the whole point.
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Smith and Sniff is a motoring podcast built around conversation rather than neat segments. Cars are the centre of gravity, but almost anything nearby can get pulled in. A listener email about tattoos becomes a discussion of Wetherspoons carpets. A question about dashboard displays leads to battery voltage, passenger-airbag warnings, Japanese boardrooms, and the absurd information cars choose to show their drivers. The show likes specific things. Trucks have faces. Old photos contain separate digital cameras and Nokia-type phones. A Honda Jazz with stolen parts is not just abandoned; it is nearly a small public-service campaign. That eye for detail gives the comedy its bite. It also keeps the car talk from becoming generic. The speakers understand the engineering, the design habits, the ownership rituals, and the nonsense that collects around vehicles over time. They are just as interested in why a modern car can survive years of casual neglect as they are in why someone once thought a particular dashboard readout deserved pride of place. On the Other Side of Things adds a direct listener-question rhythm, with emails about road trips, naming oddities, car spotting, and remembered details from old encounters. The main feed feels looser, with music tangents, live-show memories, sponsor housekeeping, and sudden bits of mock seriousness. The tone is dry rather than polished. It can be affectionate, but it rarely goes sentimental for long. For PlayNext users, the show works best as a discovery hit of British car obsession at conversational speed: knowledgeable enough for enthusiasts, sideways enough for anyone who enjoys the cultural debris around machines. It is not a tidy motorsport briefing. It is more like a shared glovebox full of observations, old receipts, model names, private jokes, and one surprisingly important question about whether a sad little car deserves saving.
Made for: For listeners who enjoy cars, design quirks, road-trip memories, and quick British banter more than formal reviews or racing news. It especially suits enthusiasts who like precise model references delivered with dry comic timing.
What sets it apart: Smith and Sniff stands out by turning small motoring details into extended comic premises without losing the underlying knowledge. The show treats car culture as engineering, nostalgia, social observation, and absurd theatre all at once.
TV presenter Jonny Smith and Sniff Petrol creator Richard Porter are two friends who talk about cars, and many other things. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Jonny Smith and Richard Porter make car knowledge approachable by mixing mechanical detail, personal recollection and quick-footed comic invention.
Smith and Sniff lets automotive talk wander until the machinery reveals something funny about its owners. Jonny Smith and Richard Porter move easily between mechanical reliability, ageing suspension, dashboard design and the hazards of e-scooters, pairing real attention to how…
A sad-faced Mercedes truck becomes a sloth holding back tears; you know immediately whether you're among friends.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A Mercedes truck's sad face becomes a funny, oddly tender bit of motoring chat.
Smith and Sniff turns the mournful face of a Mercedes Actros truck into a tiny piece of automotive character study. Johnny Smith and Richard Porter see a sloth-like expression in its downturned front, pull that imagined sadness toward Love Actually, then let the truck return to…
A precise Audi A7 towing sighting turns into a lasting holiday-drive memory.
On the Other Side of Things follows Matt Edwards's family drive to the south of France in 2013, shaping it into a tight motoring reminiscence.
A Scorpions earworm opens a funny, wandering route into Le Mans memories and dated everyday tech.
Johnny Smith and Richard Porter make a kitchen machine's stubborn preference for "Send Me An Angel" by Scorpions feel like a small study in accidental nostalgia.
A Flemish car pun opens into dashboard oddities and a Mercury Marauder jacket fantasy.
On the Other Side of Things starts with Emmanuel's note about Flemish wordplay and lets it open into a broader riff on car-obsessive thinking, before settling into the dashboards of Reece Jennings's 370Z and Lexus ISF.
A funny, grounded argument for seeing cars as complex machines that ask for real care.
The episode makes ordinary car ownership feel newly absurd by treating it as a comedy of hidden complexity. It presents the modern car as one of the most mechanically, and perhaps electronically, complicated things a person owns, while noting how casually people expect it to…
A soundtrack question wanders through remembered films, car badges, and a surprisingly busy lane of vehicular lions.
A question about familiar film music opens into a loose, funny study of cultural memory. Children demand a soundtrack album on any car journey longer than three minutes, while The Greatest Showman and The Sound of Music are treated as films people can feel they know through…
An e-scooter dispute drifts into bike tricks, suspension care, and an overbuilt Mark 1 Focus daydream.
Smith and Sniff starts with Johnny Smith weighing his son's wish for an e-scooter against his own case for a bicycle: bigger wheels, fewer pavement worries, no dead battery, and less of the texting-and-vaping aura he associates with scooters.
Jonny Smith and Richard Porter discuss the unexpectedly smutty lyrics in the K-pop soundtrack their children love, leading to a tangent about Dodge car names.
Johnny Smith and Richard Porter debate the merits of e-scooters versus bicycles, sparking a discussion on bicycle history and design flaws.
Richard Porter and Johnny Smith discuss a listener's question about mechanical empathy in cars, debating whether slipping the clutch or engaging the handbrake without the button are good practices.
A listener shares a story about his 98-year-old grandmother who passed her driving test at age 71 and bought a K-11 Micra, prompting reflections on her tenacious character.
Two friends discuss finding car parts and debris on roads and roundabouts, sharing anecdotes about fly tipping and car accidents.
Two friends discuss a sad abandoned Honda Jazz near the office and the quirks of UK car registration plates.
The hosts discuss a listener's hypothetical question about reviving 90s-era WRC with unlimited budget, debating which manufacturers and cars to include.
["Smith & Sniff moves from a mistaken 'Send Me an Angel' credit to old cars, boats, and listener mail.", "Johnny Smith and Richard Porter host the show, and their car-obsessed banter carries the episode while they correct each other in real time.", "The episode's core question is whether a song, a car, or a boat feels more '80s when the details are actually right.", "Johnny apologizes for mixing up The Scorpions with Real Life after listeners, including people in Australia, point out the error and Richard checks the song's drums and video."]
Richard Porter and Johnny Smith use On the Other Side of Things to answer listener questions, opening with a late-1990s BTCC hypothetical from Matt Edwards.
Smith & Sniff opens with Johnny Smith stuck on Scorpions' "Send Me An Angel," which Richard Porter identifies and turns into a joke about a kitchen speaker with bad taste.
The hosts answer a listener's question about his wife's new tattoo and discuss the absurdity of a sleeve tattoo resembling a Wetherspoons pub carpet.
Two podcast hosts discuss a humorous mix-up between LeBron James and Chrysler LeBaron, leading to a conversation about cars and basketball.
Richard Porter and Johnny Smith answer listener emails on their Smith & Sniff spin-off, opening with a Flemish listener's explanation that 'autosot' translates to 'car-crazy person.' Listeners share stories of being deliberately hard on hire cars, including a Fiat Punto driven at '60 in second gear' out of spite after a botched insurance claim.
Johnny Smith and Richard Porter mark their 400th episode of Smith & Sniff by joking about which '400'-badged cars they'd be, then debate whether Lotus should abandon large passenger cars and instead revive the TVR name for bigger sports cars while keeping Alpine-style light cars for itself.