Volkswagen board expected to approve $4.3-billion plea bargain in diesel scandal

[silvrsvt]

http://www.autoblog.com/2017/01/11/volkswagen-billion-fine-settlement-us/

[Joe771476]

Here's a company that has put aside billions as if it were pocket change for potential fines, lawsuits, buybacks/repairs and STILL has the wherewithal to buy a 17 percent chunk of Navistar/International for $256 million! And as they're agreeing to the govt's penalty of billions, still has the arrogance and audacity to say they're the biggest car maker in the world by sales! To borrow a line from Deputy Marshall Sam Gerard's observation regarding a pharmaceutical company in the movie "The Fugitive," "This company's a monster!" One of the top execs commented that they were lucky Americans are forgiving and forget. I think in the back of his mind it was Americans are morons! Here we have a company that was basically the brainchild of Hitler, who along with his officers, also rode around in tandem axle Mercedes staff cars! And many consumers keep buying this crap! That's right, crap. These VW's/Audis and Mercedes aren't anything special. There's Ford Fusions out there that are 10 times the vehicle of most Mercedes that I've seen! Boy I guess we are dumb!

[jpd80]

An now it turns out that the vehicles were running full time in test mode (clean) up until about five years ago

when a spate of issues with failing exhaust emission equipment encouraged a VW head of engineering

to link test mode to steering wheel movement and put the cars into defeat (cheat) on the road.

 

The vehicles as originally delivered worked and complied with emissions throughout the real world driving range

but because of premature failure of emission equipment running all the time, VW decided to mess up the calibration..

Edited January 16, 2017 by jpd80