You know, the car that wrote the Lemon Law.

Everything that could possibly go wrong with that car, did.

Its favorite trick was just stopping. It did that one late night on the SF Bay Bridge. Great fun.

AKA "Sure-kill"---Expressway!

Took him months because the problem was intermittent. It was a defective circuit board (or transistor or electronic thingy or something) in the fuel injection system.

That thing did have its problems, like taking up to 30 minutes to finally get started. One mechanic attributed it to "vapor lock", but he still couldn't fix it. At least it didn't stop on me while I was driving on a busy road-- it had the good graces to wait until I was on a quiet residential street before pulling that "vapor lock" trick on me.

The 77 was a big hunk of junk that was traded two years latter for the Diesel 79. My mother was a huge VW fan owning 4 bugs before the rabbits. The 79 was here last VW product...

I had two bugs and a bus before I bought the Rabbit. I think mine was a ’79.

I sent VW a 10-page list of complaints and repairs for a three-year-old car. They sent back one paragraph that said, "Gee sorry, but we're not responsible for anything after the first year of warranty." That was, and always will be, the last VW product for me.

no issues...

Fun to drive little stick

4 Rabbits in my family and they were great forever. One might actually be around somewhere. Nothing drove in the snow like that car. And yes, totally fun to drive. I'd buy that car tomorrow.

revealed and the profit derived from the deception, including environmental damage, is assessed as the civil penalty.

And does this kind of deception, or other unknown deceptions, just stop at VW?

Is the GOP 12% job approval Congress too busy trying to take Clinton down to launch a true investigation?

12% GOP Congress job approval is not the headline because Obama job approval is "low" at 45% and also not the headline, unless there is any dip which is then the headline.

I doubt it

Criminal intent - corporations are evil.

knowingly allowing this to happen should serve hard time in prison. Fines are worthless, they just consider it the cost of doing business. Hard time in prison might give them second thoughts or at least get them out of the picture for awhile. Rather, they hide behind bullshit corporate immunity. Changing that will never get done with our dip shit congress. They, are part of the problem.

The American way.

They are just the ones who got caught.

Caterpillar, Inc., Cummins Engine Company, Detroit Diesel Corporation, Mack Trucks, Inc., Navistar International Transportation Corporation, Renault Vehicules Industriels, s.a., and the Volvo Truck Corporation


Funny, I still see them on the road. Honda and Ford got busted as well.

FUCK THEM!

knowingly allow this crap to happen. Fines are totally worthless, they just consider it the cost of doing business.

I just read a report that Winterkorn's getting tossed out on his ass at VW and replaced by the current CEO at Porsche (Matthias Müeller). That may be all the justice we get.

EDIT: VW's denying the report now, though...

who had absolutelty nothing to do with this.

Move along. Move along.

Yes innocent Germans whom always opposed the Nazi's had to suffer through the destruction of their homeland. But really what choice did we have then or now?

What about GM? People died there.

I'm all for fining the company and if the government can place those responsible in jail then it should do that. But VW provides good paying jobs and benefits for their employees.

The EPA won't approve the COC (required for any car sales in the US) from VW for 2016. Presumably they don't trust the manufacturers claim that their cars meet emissions requirements.

2016 VW's are stacking up at the ports, and cannot be sold at least for now.

caught one time or another doing some thing illegal or got caught hiding a defect that kills people.

The only car/truck sales that should be banned are ones not made by union labor.

Letting the guilty party an d actors go about their business while others are held to pay for it is not going to change behavior. We need to be more aggressive in penalizing the unscrupulous individual actors who knew of, were complicit as well as those who directed, winked and nodded for such actions to take place.

Will continue to pretty much do what they want with pretty much no consequences

I walk through a parking lot of about 1000 cars a day....there may be one VW in it somewhere.




Their quality is a worse crap shoot than a Dodge, and other than their Diesels there's no reason to even imagine owning one.

nt

SInce the old beetle I wouldn't even look at a VW to buy. I had a few of the old beetles and pretty much cut my teeth on how an engine works on them. Lots of fond memories in my old beetles.

But I hate that now I know it's not as clean as it needs to be.

The mileage is amazing- I get 48-50 on the highway and my drive to work has a long downhill off the mountain and I pull in with an average of 54mpg for the trip.

In the forums they are saying the recall will probably flash the computer for the software used for EPA tests, that will take the MPG down to the EPA rated 40-42. So I will be getting worse mileage, and releasing more CO2 per mile but lower NOx emissions after the recall if I do it.

(if I had a diesel VW) I would have to think twice about the recall.

To me its a no brainer. If you don't adhere to the recall, you're basically driving an illegal vehicle thats hurting the environment. Pretty simple choice.

DUH

And also using more fuel.

It's basically putting out more now and less CO2 while using less fuel.

Supposedly after the recall it will put out less NOx, the area it now is over, but at the tradeoff of more CO2 emmissions and lower fuel economy.

based on their standards. I would defer to them.

penalty...

Volkswagen would qualify...

And if that is the case, it is all good to them. They care not what evils they profit from, only that they do.

Closing down VW in the US would hurt the workers in those factories, and primarily benefit GM and Toyota, who are also evil.

In fact, what GM did (ignition switch) and what Toyota did (floor mats) actually killed people . . .

Moreover, there is a qualitative difference between being hesitant and - yes - immoral in acknowledging and addressing a design flaw (Toyota and GM) and explicitly designing in a deception device. Whatever GM's faults in the ignition switch case (and they are legion, to be sure), GM's management and engineers did not deliberately design a murderous ignition switch. Volkswagen did, in fact, intentionally design a murderous emissions test mask. Air pollution kills and injures people. They didn't care.

As for the workers, it is, of course, a good point. I hope that we are willing to extend the same consideration to all the innocent people who stand as collateral damage in typical criminal sentencing, like the families of the convicted and the like.

benefit for society. Most convicts are legally employed before serving their sentences . . . afterwards they're career criminals.

I guess I'm not huge on the difference between the 'knowingly' state of mind vs specific intent.

Very glad I don't have to own an automobile.

fines just disappear in the gov budget black hole

perhaps funding environmental clean ups
perhaps funding asthma research
perhaps funding high speed trains

we need to get some lemonade out of this lemon

I'm afraid the list of banned companies would be quite long. The number of unemployed would be in the millions...

VW Group
WalMart
IBM
Dannon
Taco Bell
Procter & Gamble
Hyundai
KIA
General Mills
Johnson & Johnson
New Balance
etc...

in the world, I just can't get too upset over this one. It seems pretty far from the top when it comes to listing evil-doings.

However, they should be ordered in the bluntest language possible besides very direct legal edicts that they either fixed their 2 liter diesel engines, or take them off the road. Plus compensation to the buyers of their VW TDI 2 liter EA 189 engines, as victims of fraud.

Volkswagen may leave the US and Canadian Market, because the hit they are going to take, not just in the US, but worldwide. Their plant in Chattanooga TN, builds the Passat diesel, which is half of the plant’s total output.

Right now, I think VW will have to take their EA 189 based cars off the road, because their Dec. 2014 software patch didn’t fix the problem, and they are having problems even with their EA 288 engines with AdBlue/Urea Injection system to meet emissions standards.


So in many ways there is a big risks that VW won’t be selling any cars in US and Canada, given they will be retreating from it..

I've been thinking about the mess they've gotten themselves into. I did a bit of calculation and I really doubt they'll be able to survive a a company. They can't depend on any income from sales in the US in the future, the repair or replacement of all those "faulty" cars will cost BILLIONS OF DOLLARS" and no business that I know of could sustain that kind of a loss with the loss of much of its revenue and still survive.

I have exclusively driven Volkswagen products for many years. We currently have one for my wife and one for myself. Both are 2.0 Turbo 4 cylinders (gas) Fantastic cars and I generally keep them until they are well past 200k miles.

While their actions cannot be excused, at the same time the effect on the overall air quality is very miniscule. They have a very small market share and diesel are just a portion of that.