I'm starting this tag because I suspect this is going to be a long one and I'm going to watch it ALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL the way down. Especially as this is now 11 million cars. Especially as VW's stock was hammered for $18b yesterday and another $11b today. Especially as -
Okay, I'll admit it. I fucking hate Volkswagen.
Our first Volkwagen was a piece of shit 67 beetle. it broke all the time. Also, since we were at 7200 feet its normal "gutless" response was positively anemic. Goddamn that car was a piece of shit.
Then in high school we rolled with this kid named Scooter. Scooter had a baja bug. Baja bugs were always driven by assholes offroad that would burn the fuck out of the road with their shitty traction rather than crawling up stuff like someone respectful. Fuck baja bugs.
Then the GTi came out and it was a cheap car that went too fast and didn't brake very well. And they were fucking everywhere and they were driven by douchebags that knew fuckall about tuning and thought Fahrvergnugen was the coolest word in the world.
But I didn't truly understand how much I despise VW until I moved to Los Angeles and discovered that while everyone in LA is an asshole on the road, flagrant assholes are 95% in german cars. Granted: BMW are worse than VW and Audi and Mercedes are better, but considering VW ag represent VW, Porsche, Audi, Bentley, Lamborghini, Bugatti and Ducati, they damn near have the asshole market of Southern California sewn up.
So know that if you're going to post about VW, I'ma share it. And if you follow me and you don't wanna see my deep, dire, desolate schadenfreude for VW Group, you oughtta filter that tag. 'cuz I got my popcorn and it is salty.
As long as we're telling piece-of-shit VW stories, my first car was a '66 Beetle. My dad bought it because he was convinced it had 47k original miles on it, despite the odometer only going up to 99,999, and low mileage was the only thing he knew to look for in a car. The car sat in a barn for 20 years maybe, with oil in the engine I presume, and it had visible signs of moss growing on the body. The guy we bought it from tried to fix it some before cutting his losses and selling it to a fool (my dad). Before he did that he installed an extra fuse in the rear for some reason that would repeatedly blow, usually on hot days when I had to crawl under it in 100 degree heat to replace the fuse 5 or 10 times before it would start. It also blew two cylinders on the last day of sophomore year requiring a half assed repair that was about as much as he'd paid for it. I drove it for about two years and bought a '78 Nova because I was sick of that piece. My dad lugged that thing from Alabama to Arkansas to Georgia before selling it for too much after running a free ad for it for over a year. He got back what he put into it and traded that for a large amount of respect from me and my mother.
Hey. To be fair, it was an old barn car. It could have been worse. It could have been a brand new, pyromaniacally suicidal r32.
I also had a friend in high school with a nicely painted, fun to drive Super Bug. We drove each other's cars one day and he was reportedly miserable while I had fun driving a big blue go kart. He was late to school one day and when he showed up he was visibly upset. He passed me a note which was a drawing of his car on fire while he ran in to save his CDs. So yes, at least it never ignited.
Beetles had this awesome "feature" where they had "storage" under the back seat... next to the battery. There was this floppy fiberboard cover that went over everything.
By the 3rd or 4th owner the floppy fiberboard cover was generally gone. Not only that, but the springs in the back, particularly if the car was owned by a college kid in a college town, had suffered a little.
This meant that if the 4th or 5th owner slung his particularly-heavy book bag on the back seat, opposite the driver (as one would), the metal springs of the seat would occasionally touch down on the positive terminal of the battery and short to ground. Causing a piece of 4-gauge spring steel surrounded by sisal fiber and naugahyde to get very, very hot.
But usually not until you'd gone to the ice cream parlor or Starbuck's or pool hall or whatever.
There were three VW Beetle self-immolations in my college experience. No one I knew, but it was a common enough occurrence that we discussed it in my vehicle design class.
Girl I know dated my best friend and drove a VW.
She always had a starbucks cup in one hand, said namaste unironically, and was one of those people that are whiter than white but go "I'm Native American and 3/4ths Irish and 2/26ths Costa Rican".
My friend brought her EVERYWHERE we went and I had to shut her down eventually.
Fuck VWs.
Man. I don't know who would annoy me more, a girl like her or your typical euro scene bro. Popped collar polos, fashion sunglasses, hogging the best spots at cars and coffee so fancier, rarer, or more unique builds have to park in less desirable spots. I could go on. They're a nuisance.
. . . sometimes though I see a sweet dub build.
Unsurprisingly maybe, but I'm gonna follow the shit out of this tag. Much like kleinbl00 I too hold VW in great disdain. It's only been a few days, but already this is more exciting than all of the drama that happened on Reddit over the summer.
Though, I do have to complain that it seems to me that Autoblog, one of my favorite blogs, keeps posting new articles about this whole fiasco without actually bringing in many new or relevant facts. Come on guys, I know you're owned by AOL, but do you really gotta act like corporate news channels?
I haven't followed Jalopnik for a while now, shortly after Murilee Martin left. They're often sub par at best, though they did often have some nice features like "Nice Price or Crack Pipe." If you don't want to follow Jalopnik on this, Car and Driver seems to have some decent coverage.
- The VW Diesel Scandal Is Much Worse than a Recall—It’s Outright Deceit
Oh, yes. Yes indeed. There's no torch'n'pitchfork like editorial torch'n'pitchfork.
non-sequitor - I posted this, then went running. While on my run, I got honked at by a bitch in an Audi A7.
For crossing the street.
In the crosswalk.
With the light.
And a walk signal.
Because she was too busy speeding through a residential neighborhood while texting and neglected to notice that the light had been red for a full 5 seconds by the time she got to it.
But that's my fault, because...
...She was driving an Audi A7.
- VW's stock was hammered for $18b yesterday and another $11b today
This morning I clicked on a link you posted yesterday to their stock price. I did a double take when I realized the -15% was for today on top of the -18% they posted yesterday.
I have no deep hatred for VW, but I find this fascinating in general.
Here's the thing that's crazy, the same effect is spilling over into other German car companies. Both Mercedes and BMW's values have fallen, though nowhere near as hard, over fear that they're pulling the same thing. I wonder what execs over at GM are thinking about this whole thing, as they've just recently started dipping their toes into the diesel passenger car pool after a few decades sitting out.
Italy, France, and potentially more European Union countries as well as South Korea are all opening up their own probes as well. Shit's getting dirty quick.
Shit, son, GM is down. Ford is down. But yeah - the Germans are downy down.
But ain't nobody stair-steps-from-hell down like VW.
It's been a rough time for car companies. Ignition switches, airbags, hackable cars, dirty exhaust . . . I mean, it doesn't really phase me cause I see recall notices on a weekly basis, but these have been some pretty high profile stories lately. It'll be interesting to see what these companies will do to try to win back public perception.
Well, a little perspective - compared to the Pinto, the Corvair, the Suzuki Samurai, the Amazing self-driving Audi, or the Ford-Firestone "underinflated tires are more stable" scandal, the only two that really hold a candle are Chevy and their ignition switches and Volkswagen and their "fuck you I won't do what you tell me" emissions play. "Hackable cars?" No body count yet. No deliberate and pervasive conspiracy to commit fraud.
I think they mea culpa the shit out of it, offer stupendous trade-in rebates and wait for everyone to forget.
Well, the hackable Jeep is a bit of an outlier I guess, if only because even though it did lead to a recall, it was more of a spectacle story than an outright risk. Though, it did highlight an issue that is going to become more and more prevalent in cars as computers really start to take a central roll.
However, I think that the Takata airbag issue is just as serious as GM's ignition switches and VW's dirty exhaust if only because the recall is so massive.
The crazy thing about cars is a lot of people don't have any brand loyalty. They'll jump from brand to brand on a whim. To make matters worse though, when we're burned by a certain car maker we're a lot less likely to buy from them ever again. How many times in your conversations with every day folks have you heard someone say "I had an car from Company X and my experience was awful. I'm never buying from them again and I tell everyone I know to avoid them." Hell, here in this thread alone, there's a strong circle jerk against VW (who deserve it, fuck VW). One of my coworkers took part in RAM's buyback program (video auto play warning) and felt not only shafted on the issues of the truck itself, but Fiat-Chrysler. Know what he said? "Fuck RAM. I will never buy another one of their trucks again." Similarly, one of my friend's dad is having problems with his Ford Focus. Last I heard, he and the dealership are still at odds, so his Focus sits on his front lawn with a wooden giant lemon cutout that says "My Focus is a Lemon and [Ford Dealership's Name] is run by crooks!"
People and their cars man. Testy. Let me tell you.
Oh god. You're right.
- The issue involves defective inflator and propellent devices that may deploy improperly in the event of a crash, shooting metal fragments into vehicle occupants.
HOW DID I MISS THIS PART
- For its part, Toyota said it would begin to replace defective passenger-side inflators starting October 25; if parts are unavailable, however, it has advised its dealers to disable the airbags and affix “Do Not Sit Here” messages to the dashboard.
That one had me cackling, I'll admit. OH HOLY FUCK you ain't kidding. That right there is the mark of an industry caught flat-footed.
Something I think needs to be said here - dealers are detrimental to brands. When we set out to buy my wife's Fit, the first place we went started the negotiation at $4k over MSRP. When I said "why are you offering to charge me four thousand dollars over the sticker in the window?" they said "because we have costs to cover." When I said "so am I to believe that the price in the window is the price you pay?" they said "that's a nice watch. How much does a watch like that cost?"
That's something I think Tesla is absolutely doing right - i suspect Elon Musk made the calculation that dealers could only hurt his product and decided that the only people who would be selling Teslas would be Tesla employees on salary.
The thing about the Takata recalls was that it was never ending. Every time you turned around more cars were falling under the recall umbrella and Takata, who to their credit handled it about as well as possible, seemed to just keep stumbling.
As for dealerships, every experience I've ever had has been pleasant, though I'm a but curious as to what it would be like to purchase a car without a dealership.
I've built a solid relationship with my local Toyota dealer and use them for all my service as they are only 6% higher than anyone else around me. I make sure to stop by the sales guys and say "hello" when I am there. Last time I was there for an oil chance I was joking about how much longer I can keep the car running before I need one of them.
Not saying that this will help me, but it can't hurt. Still fretting the next car purchase, hopefully not for a few years yet.
This is one reason that the dealers are shitting themselves over Tesla's business model. I'll never buy on of their cars (too expensive for what they are), but I'd buy from any car company that sold cars in the same way.
This is sort of how I ended up with a Scion. Back when I got the car, I wanted a manual. There were none available within 150 miles. Sigh. Thy told me to go onto the web site and custom out a car, click "have financing will settle at dealer" or something along those lines and wait for an email (in 2002!!) that the car was ready to be picked up. No haggle, no sales crap, got the car for exactly what Consumer Reports said the car was worth and got the exact vehicle I wanted. I had to go to the dealer, sign paperwork, deal with my trade-in, hand over the loan info from the bank, and within an hour of showing up I was out the door in my new car.
I am filled with nothing but dread for when this car finally bites the dust. No car buying experience will ever be that good again.
However, I think that the Takata airbag issue is just as serious as GM's ignition switches and VW's dirty exhaust if only because the recall is so massive.
FUCK THIS FUCKING RECALL
this is the shit that's had my vehicle in Import Purgatory for 6 fucking months. I FINALLY get the replacement part tomorrow, so I can fucking import my fucking car so I can get a new insurance policy so I can fucking get it registered. SO much weight off my shoulders.
I'm still in shock that somebody high up enough to make such important decisions is so stupid. Actually gaming emissions tests is just straight up criminal and, what's worse, amoral. I'm surprised it took so long to be uncovered. What the fuck were they thinking? I guess "€€€" and stupidity, but Christ.
No VW stories from me, though. I think we had a Golf way back? I liked that car. Also, I was like 8
And here, the asshole drivers are usually Mercedes. With their "in-built" right-of-way
I literally know nothing about cars. I never had an opinion on them, and I'm not ashamed to admit I was looking into a new car; among the manufacturers VW was on that list. Since the incident they aren't, but what it did open up my eyes to was that I need more knowledge on cars. Not sure where I begin, but I hate being blind so to speak.
Pay the $20 a year and get Consumer Reports. They buy their cars at a dealer and test them in the real world as a "daily driver" before doing the normal test track stuff. And if you subscribe they give you a contact that you can use to help negotiate at the dealer.