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Remember that CV you ‘adapted’? So stop tutting and chuckle at VW instead

So Volkswagen has been caught with its trousers down in America and now everyone is running about saying the mighty German giant will be driven into the wilderness by fines, lawsuits and decimated sales.
And, of course, if VW were to go out of business the fallout would be immense because it owns Audi, Bugatti, Bentley, Lamborghini, Porsche, Seat and Skoda as well. So they’d also go to the wall. And without the profits from these engineering powerhouses Germany would no longer be in a position to bail out the Greeks or house half of Syria. Which would cause global economic collapse, a humanitarian catastrophe and many plagues.
VW, then, is all set to become the new benchmark pariah. Robert Maxwell with windscreen wipers. North Korea with a tax disc. And that’s odd because, as far as I can tell, what it has actually done isn’t all that bad.
The story begins deep in the swivel-eyed mind of the world’s eco-mentalists, who spent years telling us that if we wanted to save the planet, we must all buy diesel cars. And then, when half of us had done just that, they changed tack and said: “Noooo. Diesel cars are the new peril. They produce a blend of nitrogen and oxygen that we shall call NOX because that sounds sinister, and this will kill all our babies and puppy dogs by teatime tomorrow.”
And, of course, various soft-in-the-head governments around the world took note of this nonsense and promptly introduced new regulations on how much NOX a car could produce.
These new rules meant car firms had to spend a fortune designing a whole new range of diesel systems that run on a mix of diesel and concentrated urine. But VW went further and fitted its engines with a clever bit of software that exaggerated their economy and cleanliness when they were being tested.
This sounds a bit naughty, but let’s consider for a moment who suffers. Volkswagen’s customers? Crikey, no. The car they bought was better to drive than it would have been had it been re-engineered to comply with the rules. It had a nicer engine that didn’t need a tankful of urine to operate properly.
So what about your baby and your puppy dog? Well, mathematicians at Greenpeace have calculated that by ignoring the rules VW has murdered 1,700 people. But that’s rubbish because about 60% of manmade NOX emissions do not come from road transport, and of the 40% that do, the vast majority are from lorries and buses. So in the big scheme of things, your neighbour’s Golf diesel makes no discernible difference.
Put simply, then, Volkswagen looked at a set of arbitrary figures that had been dreamt up by a bunch of ill-informed, woolly-headed government officials and chose to ignore them. We are not talking about thalidomide here. Or Bhopal. It’s just a bit of good-natured rule-bending, and we all do that. We claim the VAT back on stuff that isn’t technically a business expense. We park on double yellow lines when we pop into a shop. We write CVs that aren’t completely accurate. We have spouses who take our speeding points. We trick automated supermarket checkout machines into thinking a bottle of champagne is a pack of biscuits, and our children make false IDs so they can go clubbing on a Friday night.
In my shorthand exam at journalism college I needed to achieve 110 words a minute, which I could have done by hard work and practice. But instead I used a discreet tape recorder with a half-speed playback facility. And my 1970s haircut to hide the earpiece cable.
And it’s not just individuals either. A few years ago a large European car company had a problem. It had spent billions on developing a new model that it guessed would not pass strict EU drive-by noise regulation tests. So it came up with a cunning plan.
On the day of the test, engineers drove the car up to the required speed and then, as they approached the government inspector with his clipboard and his decibel-ometer, they simply slipped the car into neutral, turned the engine off and coasted. The car passed, went on sale and you probably bought one. I know I did.
There’s more. An Italian company fitted the exhaust pipes in its new model with valves that remained closed when the car was being tested by pesky officials but would open up, as if by magic, in the real world.
And ultimately, who cares? Because contrary to what the BBC or The Guardian or the Pope would have you believe, it’s not a matter of life and death. It’s all just a silly game.
The eco-mentalists disagree, of course. They keep telling us that people made a decision to buy a Volkswagen purely and only because of its impressive-sounding NOX emission figures. But this is rubbish. I bought a Volkswagen in the summer and what comes out of its poo shoot interests me not one bit. I care about safety, value, performance and build quality. But how much nitrogen is coming out of the tailpipe? Like every other level-headed soul in the entire world, I couldn’t give a stuff.
I therefore don’t want to see VW driven into oblivion over a bit of well-intentioned and harmless cheating. But there’s a danger that this will happen unless what’s left of the senior management stop wringing their hands and sweating in press conferences and go on the attack.
VW used to have the best advertising in the world. It managed to make the world forget the company was started by Hitler and run originally by the Nazi party, and it needs to pull off the same trick now. We need to see Golfs with ship’s funnels belching smoke. Or a lemon with a caption saying “Liar”. Maybe it could use music from the band Busted. But, whatever, the company needs to win its way back into our hearts through our funny bones.
Because look at it this way, Volkswagen. We know the whole saga is a joke and we are going to laugh at you. So get in early and laugh at yourself before we have the chance.

xjrguy wrote:Looks like I got rid of my VW just in time.

Granted it was a VR6 gas model (CC VR6) but I would imagine resale would still take a hit due to the cloud of all this hanging over the brand.

My new Porsche Twin Turbo was a worthy replacement.

VW is definitely in hot water. Can't imagine why they thought this was a good idea or that they would get away with it.