A lot of those are reeeeeealy nice and expensive cars to be consumed by the third world.
A lot of those are reeeeeealy nice and expensive cars to be consumed by the third world.
aircooled wrote:bastomatic wrote: ....I'm betting TDI owners are going to be most upset about what this does to their normally stellar resale values.Also of note, at least in CA. If the car cannot pass smog it is almost impossible to sell since they cannot register it and it's the sellers responsibility to ensure it passes smog.
So when I go out west next month I can pick one up cheap and drive it back to to NY?
HappyAndy wrote:Knurled said: That said, the whole point of VW's game is that the cars will pass a scantool test.Not just a scan tool test, but a government test cell test. I'm pretty sure that it was Cadillac that was busted for nearly the exact same thing about a decade ago. The car knew the difference between being on rollers and actually on the road, and had different settings for each. IIRC, they got a slap on the wrist and a recall notice to owners.
I wouldn't doubt it. Some people - totally not me - have had to roll back 20 degrees of base timing (!) in order to get some of those 80s Caddys to pass a roller test, even though everything was in correct operating condition. NOx out the wazoo no matter what you did.
One more reason why I'm happy for Ohio's 25 year cutoff for emissions testing. In just a few more years, ALL cars that need to be tested will be a scantool test. Granted, it is somewhat of a silly rule since the vast majority of cars in the affected counties won't live to half that age before they're rusted apart.
In reply to Knurled:
I get what you are saying, but this was an N* powered model from the nineties.
In reply to HappyAndy:
4.9s aren't Northstars. 4.9s were the ultimate evolution of the absolutely atrociously horrid 4.1. The 4.9 brought the 4.1 design up to merely "crappy". The 4.9s only had wet liner problems if you were dumb enough to remove a cylinder head, the 4.1s had something like a 200% failure rate. A local school called a Caddy dealer for scrap engines for the students to tear down, the dealer tried to give 'em 50 engines. That is how many they had on hand at that time. After the second engine let go the owner usually scrapped the car.
All engines from Caddy from that era required a "coolant additive", GM part number blah blah blah. It was Bar's Leak.
When the Northstar replaced the 4.9, we were amazed that Caddy could make such a gigantic leap forward in power, smoothness, reliability, and ease of service. It was like going from a rotary phone to an iPhone 4 with nothing in between.
My rough calculation shows that Volkswagen AG lost $3.580 billion in value. Expect shareholder lawsuits. A big portion of VW is owned by the state in Germany (Lower Saxony) and so I expect there may be some german politicians, and their prosecutors, interested in this.
Is there any mitigating factors in VW's favor? I haven't heard any yet. Is there another side to this story?
I've been keeping my eye out for a 2.0 TDI engine for the Samurai. I'm thinking they'll get cheaper by the news report. 
"Volkswagen is relatively immune to stock market pressure because only 12 percent of its voting shares are traded. Porsche Automobil Holding, controlled by members of the Porsche family, holds a slight majority. The German state of Lower Saxony owns 20 percent, and the sovereign wealth fund of Qatar owns 17 percent."
from http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/22/business/international/volkswagen-shares-recall.html?_r=1
DoJ announces criminal investigation. http://jalopnik.com/volkswagen-is-now-the-target-of-a-criminal-investigatio-1732130214
DWNSHFT wrote: Is there any mitigating factors in VW's favor?
They were technically correct, which is the best kind of correct!
irish44j wrote: my guess is that they'll just start shipping them all off to third-world countries where diesel is the standard fuel and people don't care about emissions and/or there are no regulations. E.g. most of Africa, central America, etc.
Except these engines (mainly the uber-high pressure injection pumps) are fairly sensitive to fuel quality and it's doubtful they would live long. Not that VW would care...
The '03 ALH motor was the last of the "low tech" TDI's, and even then I'd probably want to replace the fuel filter more often than the usual 20K interval.
HappyAndy wrote: In reply to ebonyandivory: I wonder if one of the other manufacturers ratted them out? Surely they tried to reverse engineer one, and found that things weren't adding up. OEM's also have the hardware to do full tailpipe tests on the road in 100% real world conditions.
I have seen first hand that some manufactures are will go out of there way and spend good money to test other manufactures emissions when there mileage/performance claims are just "a little to good to be true". so its not out of the realm of possibilities.
I was just listening to BBC World News on the radio, this is not just a problem for US market VW's, it's worldwide!
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/23/business/international/volkswagen-diesel-car-scandal.html
VW is saying that the issue affects 11,000,000 VW/Audi vehicles worldwide, which is basically all of their I4 diesel passenger cars sold since 2009. Millions of Europeans are waking up to the fact that their 'clean' diesels are anything but. The regulators and politicians will have a field day with this. The financial fallout from this could cripple the entire company.
Big news today. Investigation expanded to 3L V6 models:
http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2015/09/breaking-epa-expands-emissions-investigation-to-volkswagen-3-0-liter-v6-diesels/
And rumors the CEO might have to pull the rip cord on his golden parachute:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/09/22/us-usa-volkswagen-idUSKCN0RL0II20150922?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews
Whoa.
So, this is a really good time to buy VW stock. No dinero aqui, comprehende?
I own one, I don't care. When the warranty runs out, DPF delete and tune upcoming..... Unless VW wants to buy it back from me before the mods begin.....
11......million......cars......?
It would be hilarious if all car makers were playing this game.
As a matter of fact, since it was not a competing manufacturer that outed VW, I wonder who else is quaking in their boots?
Wonder what those guys in Chattanooga TN are going to be doing next year?
Should also put this "Crime" in context. In the grans scheme of what Wall Street pulled off in the early 2000's, Volkswagen should both fall under the now established legal precedent of "Too Big To Prosecute" and or receive massive corporate bonuses, because like that's what Americans do for their white collar crooks. Or they let them run the country.
Either way, this is going to hurt Joe Public more than anyone else. Besides the current owners who are going to get shafted, someone somewhere is also going to figure how to line their pockets by throwing Tax dollars at the problem under the guise of moral outrage and protecting us from such thins. Probably have to take your belts and shoes off at car dealers in the near future.
VW stock has taken quite a tumble. It is quite tempting to pick some stock up, but you wonder where the bottom is at.
Harvey wrote: VW stock has taken quite a tumble. It is quite tempting to pick some stock up, but you wonder where the bottom is at.
Was not a very exciting stock to start with.
Oh, E36 M3. It continues; now it's coming out that VW effectively duped taxpayers out of $51 million in "green" vehicle subsidies as a part of this mess. Now the IRS is pissed in addition to the EPA.
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-vw-subsidies-20150922-story.html
This is getting BAD for VW. Like, spiraling out of control bad...this is quite possibly the biggest manufacturer berkeleyup in history, on a number of levels.
NOHOME wrote: Should also put this "Crime" in context. In the grans scheme of what Wall Street pulled off in the early 2000's, Volkswagen should both fall under the now established legal precedent of "Too Big To Prosecute" and or receive massive corporate bonuses, because like that's what Americans do for their white collar crooks. Or they let them run the country.
VW's not a finance company, so they won't get bailouts for committing massive crimes that threaten to cause economic collapse. They're a big automaker - they get bailouts for nearly running themselves into the ground, so the German government might bail them out later depending on how bad this gets.
Even if they were a finance company, committing a crime that doesn't threaten to cause an economic collapse doesn't get a bailout, it gets a slap on the wrist. See: HSBC's rampant money-laundering.
NOHOME wrote:Harvey wrote: VW stock has taken quite a tumble. It is quite tempting to pick some stock up, but you wonder where the bottom is at.Was not a very exciting stock to start with.
No doubt.
De Chinese are onto us! Suddenly the massive explosion that occurred in August starts to makes sense.
NOHOME wrote: Either way, this is going to hurt Joe Public more than anyone else. Besides the current owners who are going to get shafted, someone somewhere is also going to figure how to line their pockets by throwing Tax dollars at the problem under the guise of moral outrage and protecting us from such thins. Probably have to take your belts and shoes off at car dealers in the near future.
Crap, you're right. This could be the perfect impetus for instituting California-style emissions testing nationwide - you know, for the children.
On a lighter note, I love belonging to a forum where not just one, but two other posters' first thought on Dieselgate was "Cool - now I can get a cheap TDI engine for my project car!"
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