Volkswagen Planning Capital Push to Raise Money For Scandal

I think its more insane how news sites have taken it, they act like cheating and rigging in the auto industry are new things. Theres a reason why the Acura RSX had a 5 star rating, but yet has a rather high fatality rate in the real world. Yet VW diesels are the real villain here, we write about 60 articles on it, even though most US far buyers openly despise VW cuz their friends 96 Jetta was a pos. Back when Toyota had sticky pedals I dont recall TTAC making this many articles, let alone when Ford rigged their offset collision test. If were going to reporr on VW Id like to hear about other automakers too. Everyone cheats, VWs only the first to be caught. Btw below me on my phone is a VW ad on this site.

@Ryoku75 I am not an international businessman by any means, but from what I understand bribery is common and is considered a cost of doing business. Spreading a ridiculous amount of money around to the key people in charge once this was discovered would have done wonders. Literally billions will be lost for what amounts to infractions in code. DW goes off a bit on rants but he has a point on the GM ignition scandal. Ford's Pinto defect cost people their lives and money, but not many billions.

@Ryoku75 Most cheating these days is exploiting loopholes and such, and not the sort of blatant fraud that the EPA and CARB expressly forbid back the early '70s. Although, this could be a very expensive example of how VW fails to comprehend the realities of the US market.

@Ryoku75 > Btw below me on my phone is a VW ad on this site. And above on mine is a big banner ad from a lawyer's office for a "TDI lawsuit". Consumers never win, just lawyers.

@28-Cars-Later It can even happen here if checks and balances aren't in place. I knew someone who worked in pharmaceutical sales who mentioned the stories of the corruption at a well known big Canadian grocer's purchasing department where the buyer demanded all-expenses paid vacations for his family before he'd even grant an interview for the drug company. Off the books, of course.

@bumpy ii I'm with bumpy ii, It's the blatant and active flaunting of the law in this case that has VW in so much trouble. Ford was technically following the law when they had their issues with the C-Max milage, they were just using technicalities to game the system. GM probably should have figured it out sooner, but it's pretty obvious that no one intentionally designed a bad ignition switch. Even Toyota really only got beaten up by regulators because they were trying to keep the mat problem hush-hush. It's the same reason why we have murder vs. manslaughter laws. In both cases something bad happened, but the intent matter a lot. VW systematically intended to flaunt regulations by using a defeat device. The EPA also has an interest in no one doing this again, so now VW is set up to be made an example of.

@Ryoku75 "Theres a reason why the Acura RSX had a 5 star rating, but yet has a rather high fatality rate in the real world." Yes, it's very simple. The demographic that drives the RSX is the type that gets into a lot of accidents, particularly high speed ones. If you're trying to levy an accusation on the safety of that car, try to make the same case for the Honda Civic, because it's the same underlying platform.

@Demetri Exactly. In other news, the 1987 Mercury Grand Marquis had lower fatality rates than the 2010 BMW M3 in spite of having ten fewer airbags.

@28-Cars-Later Even if I disagree with DWs posts, hes always an interesting read. I'm sure that bribes go around, press manipulation too. But if the press sees a hot scandal story they'll quickly turn the other way and count the ad revenue.

@CJinSD I see quite a number of old land yachts with younger drivers behind the wheel. At Demetri: Good point, but I'm sure if you said that over at an Acura forum they'd say otherwise, like the guys that cant see how an SRT-4 is a Neon. I think its a mix of energetic drivers and Hondas knack for using under-spec brakes. They street race, they burn up the brakes, then just when they need to sto...

@28-Cars-Later "I am not an international businessman" Pfft. You hide behind your beaters with a mound of international cash and stock options!

@CJinSD "I think its a mix of energetic drivers and Hondas knack for using under-spec brakes. They street race, they burn up the brakes, then just when they need to sto…" Competent street racers let down by boiling the fluid? That's giving wholly inordinate credit to the driving skills of the VTEC, yo! ricers who favor those cars. They street race, they don't get on the brakes until it's too late, if at all, bam.

@CJinSD "lower fatality rates than the 2010 BMW M3" This demands that video from a couple years back of the punk kid piloting his dad's M3 directly off of the empty road into the large rocks immediately adjacent.

@Ryoku75 "Theres a reason why the Acura RSX had a 5 star rating, but yet has a rather high fatality rate in the real world." Yes, its drivers are predominately boy racer hoons who crash a lot.

@28-Cars-Later "Literally billions will be lost for what amounts to infractions in code. DW goes off a bit on rants but he has a point on the GM ignition scandal. Ford’s Pinto defect cost people their lives and money, but not many billions." If those codes (NOx limits et al) are of any use at all, in aggregate, plenty of lives have been lost due to their violation as well. A bigger lesson than that some mean, greedy, corporate chieftains from a land with a history of a certain nonchalance wrt keeping others safe from noxious gasses and fumes; is that bad things can slip by if one obsesses too much over trivialities. In this case, Europe's, and increasingly America's and Japan's as well, ridiculous and socially reinforced paranoia over something as irrelevant as soda bubbles. Diesel engines never made, nor will likely ever make, much sense in use cases other than where they are seeing average loads very close to max output. But since the soda bubble paranoia is generally a predicament of those with more money than sense, "driveability" expectations have forced VW and others to spec diesels close in power to similar segment gassers, despite them being much, much more complicated to clean up in those roles. And complications, in addition to being an indirect, sideways subsidy to ever-more-competent-than-the-rest German industry, always serve as breeding ground for obfuscation and coverups. When you have hundreds of levers to pull, and every single one of them have to align exactly so in order to "pass the test", you'll never achieve the same certainty that they'll stay so aligned post testing, as when the n umber of levers are much smaller, and the underlying mechanics are more common and easier to understand. In the end, what you end up with, is effective regulatory capture, since what the bureaucrats try to regulate, is way beyond the level of complication they, along with anyone else who didn't build the thing, have a complete understanding of. It's like trying to regulate traction control in F1 and MotoGP: 100 million lines of code running on ECUs and other chips, with access to 100s of dynamic sensors, and written by $million/season hotshots with no particular reason to make understanding it easy for regulatory bodies. If NOx limits are important to maintain, pay someone a commission for finding a way to abuse a car in such a way that it overemits. Then punish the owner of the car for driving around his neighborhood in a portable gas chamber. That will very quickly shape buyer behavior in such a way that manufacturers shape up by designing very conservatively around posted limits. Something no amount of feel good pretensions of going after TThe Big Bad Corporations" ever will.

@Ryoku75 "Theres a reason why the Acura RSX had a 5 star rating, but yet has a rather high fatality rate in the real world." Because they are purchased by boy racer idiots who are more likely to crash. (EDIT: I wrote that without first having read JMO's comment.)

@Corey Lewis Shhhhh

VW will do what GM did when it needed money... Get a bailout from the government!

@mchan1 What!? Just who does VW think they are!? Greece?