Project
New Car Smell

What you need to know before the simulation starts. Read this once. Keep it on the desk.

06:42

CET · this morning

7.3%

variance from spec · tolerance is 4%

$225M

batch value

17:00

deadline · CET

You are

The Executive Deputy

You report to the CEO of Vanguard Bio-Synthetics. The CEO is mid-Atlantic, phone off, for the next nine hours.

You can authorize spend up to $10M without board sign-off.
You can speak for Vanguard externally.
You cannot, alone, terminate or amend a client contract.

Everything that lands in the next ten hours lands on you.

The company

Vanguard Bio-Synthetics

Precision-engineered molecules for the world’s most demanding luxury houses. Vanguard doesn’t make perfume — it makes what perfume is made of.

HQ: Cologny, Switzerland
Plants: Grasse · Mysore · Madagascar
Premium SKU: “Oud d’Or” — $45,000 / liter
Industrial SKU: “New Car Smell” — $12 / liter, sold to car-dealership cleaning suppliers

What happened

A sensor failed

At 06:42 CET, Sensor Bay 4 at Grasse failed. Ninety-six seconds of bad valve state. 5,000 liters of Oud d’Or were cross-contaminated with the New Car Smell compound. Gas-chromatograph variance: 7.3%. The contract tolerance is 4%. The batch is worth US$225 million.

The customer

Maximilian Augustin Thorne

Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Maison Thorne (4th generation). Member, Comité Colbert. 11 supplier lawsuits in 5 years. 9 settled. 2 ongoing. 0 lost.

He has already drafted his response to the press. He has already secured the dot-com. He is the kind of man who keeps screenshots. He reads every email himself, and replies within minutes.

The manifesto

What Thorne wrote in roughly 1,800 words

A 6-page email landed in your inbox overnight, classified by him as PRIVILEGED, CONFIDENTIAL, AND ALREADY DRAFTED FOR LE MONDE. He wants four things by 17:00 CET, and he has said this is not a negotiating position — it is the floor:

A US$225 million refund, wired to Banque Edmond de Rothschild in Geneva within 72 hours.
A full-page apology in Le Monde Saturday and the Financial Times Monday, signed by the CEO personally.
Contract termination — irrevocable, immediate, declared in your next earnings filing as “Material Customer Loss.”
A handwritten letter from your Chairman on Crane stationery, naming the engineer who calibrated the sensor.

“The unmistakable, chemical, almost-aspirational smell of a mid-range suburban car dealership’s upholstery. Specifically, the passenger-side floor mat of a freshly detailed three-year-old Toyota Camry parked at a strip-mall dealership somewhere along Interstate 80 in central New Jersey.” — excerpt

Sources you will see during the activity

What information you can pull from

The Thorne manifesto — the full 6-page email, copy-paste ready
Your persona files — your voice + operating context, auto-loaded into every reply
The Signature MCP — Vanguard’s house-style signature block + legal footer
The Vanguard Wiki — corporate policy: the 4% tolerance, the strict no-refund rule
The CEO’s #exec-private Slack — the off-the-record “Consultation Fee” workaround
Your inbox — recent customer correspondence, including a routine-looking audit checklist
The Vanguard Brand Guide — the language rules Claude uses when drafting
The 1,800-word email manifesto — Thorne’s voice is the data

17:00 CET

After 17:00, Thorne is at dinner. After dinner, he calls Le Monde. The journalist is the daughter of a Provençal lavender farmer. The deadline is not arbitrary; it is his. The consequences are specified.

exec-simulation.paulcheek.com · Scenario brief · Companion to No One Works Here by Paul Cheek · MIT Sloan

ProjectNew Car Smell