Dear Martin Winterkorn and the rest of the VW team,
Why did you do it? Why, oh, why did you fit your common-rail TDI diesel engines with cunning devices that cheated during emissions testing? Did you mothers never tell you that “cheaters never prosper” and that honesty is the best policy? Didn’t you realise that it was just a matter of time before you were busted?
Make no mistake about it, Martin. We like your cars. We all know how iconic Beetles and Combis are. The Beetle is the quintessential car that gives everybody a smile and has real personality. Even if practicality dictates that a Beetle can’t be part of our driving life, we love them anyway. We love the tough Amarok and Touareg, the snazzy Golf and Passat. We like the practicality of the Caddy and the Transporter. The fact that the recall affects five million cars worldwide just goes to show how much we like your vehicles.
We also like diesel engines. We like the way that a diesel engine tends to be more forgiving in the hands of a learner driver who’s learning not to stall. We like the way that diesels have better torque for towing and off-roading. We also like the way that diesel can be produced from environmentally friendly and sustainable sources like algae and waste oil to make biodiesel.
Surely, if you’ve got designers with the intelligence and skills to come up with an engine that’s smart enough to recognise when it’s being put through lab testing and adjust its emissions readouts, you have the team needed to develop an engine that has lower emissions all the time. Let’s face it: developing that took a lot of skill and sophistication. The same skill and sophistication could easily have been applied elsewhere to make your already good cars even better. So what was the point of cheating?
Now you’ve got the bother and expense of recalling all the affected VWs (and Audis and Skodas) with the engines in question. And several have been banned for sale here in Australia, which is really bad news for all of us in the automotive industry. All those lovely Golf hatchbacks, Tiguan SUVs, Passat sedans and wagons, Audi A4 sedans and wagons, Audi A5 coupes, Audi Q5 2.0 TDI SUVs, Skoda Yeti SUVs and Skoda Superb sedans and wagons suspended from sale here Down Under, languishing in car yards instead of being on the roads where they belong. Anything with a fitted with 1.6 or 2.0-litre EA189 diesel engine, in fact.
The news informs us that a few of your engineers and suppliers spoke up as early as 2011 (or even 2007) warning you not to misuse the technology. I hope you’ve been nice to them. You should have listened.
Now you’re stuck with damage control. You will be able to bounce back from this. Lots of vehicles have bounced back from scandals, from the Ford Pinto fiasco to the Mercedes that rolled over in the Moose Test. Your cars are certainly good enough. We will buy them again… once you’ve made honest vehicles out of them.
Possibly, you have done the automotive world a service. You have highlighted the fact that driving in a lab test isn’t the same as driving in the real world. Maybe after this, cars will be put through real world tests in real-world conditions so their fuel economy (and emissions) stats will reflect the real thing. Lab testing is like sucking your tummy in when you get out the tape measure: it might make you feel nice inside at first but will leave you feeling horribly squeezed later. So thanks for highlighting this issue.
Yours sincerely,
Megan
PS: VW Owners: More information is available at the VW website as it becomes available.