Old News - the VW Germans Lied and Cheated

[pdub]

This one's of area commerce interest here because there's a VW plant in Chattanooga. Lots of jobs there. We've hired a few VW workers over time because we pay quite a bit more. But the bigger picture....there's no way in this world the assembly workers had any idea what was going on. Put this part on the car when it comes by on the assembly line.

How in the world did the VW executives not know what was going on? For sure the worker bees didn't know. What company, ANY company, can survive a 15 billion dollar hit and A: Keep on going, and B: Retain any amount of credibility or customer base.

I've worked with Germans on several capital projects in paper mills, enough to decide I'll never work FOR the Germans. They are for sure stereotypical. Lab coats. They argue and fuss over a millionth of a micrometer, passionately. So, how could they just choose to cheat? Unreal, all of it. Hard to believe, but there it is.

[malc]

I worked for them in Wolfsburg 1978-1991........they´re just as you described them.

[pdub]

I worked for them in Wolfsburg 1978-1991........they´re just as you described them.

I think it was around the year 2000. A build in a "small" building, smaller than what I'm used to looking at. Maybe two football fields, all told. Little stuff. Benton Harbor, Michigan.

The Germans were there, it was their stuff, their manufactured machinery. One of the German engineers had the worker bees set an I-Beam inside the building 180 degrees off. It was a stand-up piece, a supporting beam. Of course it fit the studs in the floor, it fit. But it was backward. The next piece,....it wouldn't bolt up.

Stop construction. We all went and got soft drinks and dragged chairs out of the office and set up a viewing area to watch this happen. The German guy was shitting red bricks, climbing around with a tape measure trying to prove that the I=Beam was made wrong. Nope, it was in backward. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!

[DanStokes]

Peewee - it's interesting that this thread of yours comes on the tail of your "Confidence" thread. Having worked with Germans IN THE AUTO INDUSTRY (direct connection to the issue at hand) the answer to your question is "hubris". They really thought that the stupid Gringos (or whatever their derogatory name for us is) would never find it and in the meantime their customers would brag up that their VW Diesels actually exceeded their EPA fuel economy estimates and besides, the little bugger is FAST.

Yes, VW has a huge worldwide market and so has the income to sustain this loss. Did the bosses at VW know about this? I dunno, but they might have and decided to let it go. Or the mid-level engineering bosses may have kept this little secret to themselves and accepted the back-slapping from their bosses who just thought they did a great job on this car. Unless someone writes a tell-all we'll probably never know for sure.

Either way, it frosts my cookies. Diesel is a wonderful technology and it's taken a real black eye as a result of their - hubris. Diesel should be a significant part of the solution to our FE/environmental issues due to it's significantly better use of the heat energy in the fuel (less waste heat) BTW - not sure I have the numbers right but these are in the ballpark - it only gained 0.7 MPG and about 10 HP to do the cheat instead of delivering the cars in their as-certified condition, so it wasn't a huge improvement.

Dan

[pdub]

Dan, You've gotta know I love you. Yep. One of my favorite guys. For real, always.

The thing with the VW thing, you've got tree hugger environmentalists buying and driving these cheated VW diesels, sailing along and thinking they are doing the best thing for the environment, and then they find out their cars are not what they thought they bought.....yeah, I can understand the upset. Even if they don't have big V8's drag racing and stuff. The tree huggers have a voice, and over time it's getting much bigger, versus the real valid reality of how much noise they make.

That's worth 15 billion in settlement according to the news. Pissed off tree huggers. It's funny but it's not. To be socially and politically correct, VW made a big mistake. A market mistake.

[Deaf Bob]

I wish I bought one of those diesels.. No not cuz of polluting the air but to get that $5K check all diesel owners got..
All publicity is good.. Did they make out better than if they made the car legal? HELL YEAH!
Now everybody wants a hi mpg diesel..

[JamesMayberryIII]

Peewee - it's interesting that this thread of yours comes on the tail of your "Confidence" thread. Having worked with Germans IN THE AUTO INDUSTRY (direct connection to the issue at hand) the answer to your question is "hubris". They really thought that the stupid Gringos (or whatever their derogatory name for us is) would never find it and in the meantime their customers would brag up that their VW Diesels actually exceeded their EPA fuel economy estimates and besides, the little bugger is FAST.

Yes, VW has a huge worldwide market and so has the income to sustain this loss. Did the bosses at VW know about this? I dunno, but they might have and decided to let it go. Or the mid-level engineering bosses may have kept this little secret to themselves and accepted the back-slapping from their bosses who just thought they did a great job on this car. Unless someone writes a tell-all we'll probably never know for sure.

Either way, it frosts my cookies. Diesel is a wonderful technology and it's taken a real black eye as a result of their - hubris. Diesel should be a significant part of the solution to our FE/environmental issues due to it's significantly better use of the heat energy in the fuel (less waste heat) BTW - not sure I have the numbers right but these are in the ballpark - it only gained 0.7 MPG and about 10 HP to do the cheat instead of delivering the cars in their as-certified condition, so it wasn't a huge improvement.

Dan

0.7 mpg is huge in the c.a.f.e. ratings.. don't know how you can say it wasn't enough to bother with try'n to cheat..
most likely they been cheating for years.. and only just got caught..
They didn't most likely care about the extra 10hp.. that was just icing on the cake.. but the bump in c.a.f.e. is huge, when you look at all the v12 brands they own..

[Barry Donovan]

Seems innocent.
I have been watching tugboats..
3400 hp for each of two v12.

huge robust cold starts... big squirt of rolling coal, then back to idle.

For vw, 15billion, it must be very big sales. they aren't going to be killed over it.

[Loren]

Technical proficiency is different and apart from general good judgement, Germans (and I have half German blood) tend to have one but not so much the other. If you could take a German car with a British driver and an American mechanic, you might have a winner.

People say to not buy a German car when it's out of warranty...the costs and hassles of repairs on German cars almost seem to me to reflect a spite that Germans have for anyone trying to fix any of their product when it breaks. "If you have one of our cars and for some reason you think you have to fix it, you must be an idiot and deserve to be punished". Sorta like Hitler blaming his generals when the war went bad. (Germans still have a few years to go before the thing about the last big war wears off.) I had a chance at a very nice Audi wagon a few years ago, lotsa power, five-speed, factory flarish fenders over fat low-profile tires...What a sweet car, it'd have been perfect for us but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. What misery was there going to be in it for me when the thing started to break?

One more knock on the guys, when we used to travel more within this country we found that we'd have a more pleasant experience at whatever tourist site if we stayed away from Germans also travelling in this country. Loud, complaining, pushy, cut-in-line...and loud. German ain't exactly a beautiful language to hear spoken sometimes, it kinda rattles you. English with a German accent is fine. I can hear Spanish with any accent all day, not understand a word of it and still it's kinda soothing...German, no...German is for marching, for scolding, for...I'm not sure what.

That said, again I'm half Kraut (immigrant legally in the mid-1800s) and I know that when it's time to party, hang with the Germans.

[JamesMayberryIII]

^^^^^^ Thar is a reason a 80-100k vehicle is under 10k in 8-10 years.. many under 5k... The cost to fix them is nuts..
M/B rack and pinion 2400.oo that is just the part.....