Volkswagen overtakes Toyota as the world's biggest carmaker | Hacker News Reader

Volkswagen overtakes Toyota as the world's biggest carmaker

bbc.com

188 pointst23206 comments

One thing learned from: Volkswagen,airbnb,google,amazon,uber,facebook is to CHEAT. Illegal hotels, copyright infringement, skipping sales tax, fake cabs,profiting on personal data.. and now, illegal emission testing.

This is the logical conclusion when you allow corporations to be 'people' without the consequences of being a person. How do you send a company to jail?

Its kinda of like that scene in fightclub where Edward Nortons character talks about the cost of doing a recall.

The emissions scandal should have ended VW.

Solution: Guillotine for corporate crime.

Many people look at emissions testing as an annoyance and I doubt that outside of environmental circles that very many people cared. And it was diesel car emissions -- a niche of the US market that's almost invisible anyway.

It isn't their job to care. The job of a citizen is to elect officials to act in his or her (the citizen's) best interest. Another way of looking at it: regulations are a noisy approximation of how much people "care".

So citizens that don't care are supposed to elect people that do. As if somehow, by adding an additional layer of separation and lack of liability, you're somehow going to get a better result. It's no surprise how often that fails.

> I doubt that outside of environmental circles that very many people cared.

Do you have any basis for that? I think most people care about clean air and support laws and regulations to protect it. The laws did pass; there are regulatory agencies that are funded.

Most people care, unless it means they drive or fly less.

You'd think the lack of popularity of diesel would have the opposite effect. If, like the EU, there had been a lot of institutional support for diesel then you can imagine them having issues dealing with evidence that it's causing a different kind of pollution. But in America you'd hope they'd not have enough political capital and the truth would be accepted.

Fair enough. 590K diesel vehicles is a niche of the US market that's almost invisible.

So have VW purchase back every one of those cars at MSRP. It's an invisible amount anyway, right? The largest auto maker in the world could do it without blinking, right?

Then fine them a few $billion for damage to the environment, jail a handful of employees, and we can move on.

You can impose fines, but the trouble is that if the fine imposed is smaller than the profit gained from their misdeeds, (or than the losses actual compliance would cause) then they're still winning.

The laws arent the issue, nor even the punishments. The issue is a lack of enforcement. We have plenty of cops handing out speeding tickets but the number dedicated to "white collar" or "technology crime" in each state might only be a handfull. And dont try suggesting more IRS, EPA or FBI agents. In this political climate those federal agencies are seen more as criminals themselves.

Or, vote with you awl. How many Volkwagens would be sold if most mornings you came out and the tires were flat? You wouldn't buy one again I suspect.

I'm not sure how to take "The emissions scandal should have ended VW" but assuming you mean financially, I cant agree. As a listed company you would be taking away many peoples jobs and savings who are innocent parties in this.

The bigger issue is it seems there has been one executive scapegoat and no real punishment for the multitude of people involved.

While a company fine is good, if we were to gaol and heavily fine at a personal level anyone involved to the point of wiping out their net worth, and heavily fine anyone (if we cant show they were involved) who should have been in a position to know/stop this I suspect we would see a better result in these matters in future. IMO the bigger issue is every time we have one of these scandals the perpetrators seem to walk away without any personal punishment or direct consequence of their actions.

If we "end" VW, we're not going to just fire everyone, close all the factories, and throw all their assets in a river somewhere.

Instead VW will be broken up into smaller more manageable companies, with tighter governmental oversight, and if it is done properly we'll have a stronger economy for it---one without the existence of a malignant massive company.

> As a listed company you would be taking away many peoples jobs and savings who are innocent parties in this.

Perhaps we need to require of publicly-listed companies that they have a "registered acquirer" or the like--a company that all the employees would be moved to if the original company were forced out of existence. (Basically turning every Chapter 7 bankruptcy of a public company into a Chapter 11 bankruptcy by default.)

Then we could allow civil suits to kill companies with impunity, knowing their employees would just end up "passed to" another company willing to retain them for the same salaries performing the same duties.

> As a listed company you would be taking away many peoples jobs and savings who are innocent parties in this.

1. Nationalize part of the company hurting investors. 2. Auction the shares to the market 3. Profit$

This way a "too big to fail" company can continue running its business as usual while punishing the value of the company. That doesn't means that personal responsibilities are forgiven, any one that breaks the law should be prosecuted.

There are probably a lot of other solutions, the problem is that economics is not about economy but about politics.

That is fundamentally not different from a fine, which is ultimately also paid completely by the investors.

Yes, it is completely different, because the nationalization step strips the original investors from all power.

It only strips them of money, if they're willing to use money to buy the stock again in the auction.

It is fundamentally different, because it targets equity, not operating capital.

Fines can be mitigated by raising prices so that equity-holders shift pain to consumers. Stripping equity on the other hand means that you change who profits from sales.

There are a couple of hidden assumption here:

1. It is possible to punish a person for his crimes in a justifiable manner.

2. People are somehow deterred by punishment when the option of winning via cheating is available to them.

It's very hard to argue that 1 is possible considering the ethical dilemmas that it exposes e.g. would capital punishment be a justifiable punishment for a murderer?

If 2 were true, then there wouldn't be doping scandals in sports, would there?

Accountability, credibility, and a sense of duty to the greater good must be part of what defines a society. When those are intact, individuals take responsibility and accept consequences. When they are too far eroded, there is no way to force or coerce society back to integrity except perhaps through a concerted effort over many generations.

You forgot the premise of the 'outrage'

1) any entity, corporate or otherwise, must act without flaw or be dismantled. Big talk from one whom I doubt is running a top 5 company in arguably the most influential sector of the global market. The fallout of 'ending' VW is the forgotten factor. Try a little tenderness, who don't you?

2) the infrastructure that sustains VW is not a logo, or a brand name, it's thousands upon thousands of individuals, women and men who work hard to sustain that company so that vehicles are provided for a myriad of purposes. 'Ending' something if it has a flaw is like throwing away the baby with the bathwater. Why not change what needs changing and be less vitriolic? Are you shorting VW? Are you invested in Mitsubishi? Are you a Renault shill? Do you like speaking in hyperbole so as to clarify something without having to do the heavy lifting?

Obvy responses to poster above you if that wasn't clear to someone.

The problem is that at one point, when you reach a certain size, no matter the intentions you will end up affecting other people negatively.

Googles don't be evil is a good example of the problems with good intentions.

And so while I think it's fair to want the responsible people to be punished it's not as simple as it sound.

>Solution: Guillotine for corporate crime.

TBH, HN's BFF Elon Musk thinks regulators were too hard on VW: http://www.takepart.com/open-letter-to-california-air-resour...

But yeah by this logic, Winterkorn was worse than Hitler. Went way more wholesale on the gassing.

I think it says it was pointless, not harsh. The suggestion is not any less harsh.

> This is the logical conclusion when you allow corporations to be 'people'

I like how people almost never understand what they're talking about when they complain about corporate personhood. How, exactly, do you think corporate personhood is responsible for the mentioned instances of "cheating"?

Here's why corporate personhood was created; to create a legal framework under which corporations could be more effectively sued. Corporations don't actually get the same rights as individuals; they can't vote, they don't get 5th amendment rights, etc. Corporate personhood is, in most respects, quite anti-corporate (in the sense that it makes it easier to attack corporations in court).

But of course, to people who never bother to read beyond the headline, it sounds like it gives corporations the same rights as people, so of course it must be some sort of evil robber baron thing!

This is one area where you might admire Chinese government then:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal#Cont...

If you read the part that talks about criminal prosecutions, many top executives were put to death or received life imprisonment.

It's up for debate whether this is 'good' or 'justice' because the economic causes that led to the problem are complex, but babies were literally being killed because of this.

They found scapegoats for sure, but not many are really confident the real crooks were caught, and more importantly, faith was never restored in the Chinese milk industry.

Not surprised. I'm also saddened that the whistle blower died under suspicious circumstances.

Corporate personhood is not the problem here. You'll find many instances of corporate lawbreaking in countries that lack the legal concept of corporate personhood.

The real problem is that breaking the law and then paying the fine makes corporations better off than obeying the law in the first place.

A corporation that deserves "jail time" should equate to bankruptcy. Simple as that. The fact that these companies get fined for < 1% of their total yearly profit is a joke. If you would send the person to jail, the company should be dead. $50 Million revenue? $50 Million fine. $2 Billion revenue? $2 Billion fine. Even if nobody goes to prison, the company should receive the death sentence - not a slap on the wrist. It should be that simple.

Sometimes I think there needs to be a corporate death penalty where a company that does something truly egregious is liquidated.

The problem, of course, is that would also mean putting a lot of people out of work and would also hurt many who may have not done anything wrong.

You'll be happy to know there are ongoing fraud investigations in Germany against several engineers and managers of VW and their contractors. An investigation into the CEO at the time of the cheating (Winterkorn) was launched very recently when they got testimony that he was informed of the cheating a few month before it was publicised.

You missed the most important aspect of that scene in fight club: "If the profits are larger than the costs of expected settlements and fines". That means you just need to either the chances of being caught or the fines – preferably the first because low chances of being caught just invite delusional thinking ("I'm smarter than others") and people are pretty bad with evaluating probabilities not close to 0 or 1.

To catch more wrongdoing you need more oversight, which means more people checking on companies, which means bigger agencies. This is often frowned upon, because many people want a "lean government".

Corporate personhood is a long standing legal principle stretching back at least 400 years to the first joint stock corporations. The creation of limited liability vehicles for investors to pool resources, govern large cooperatives of individuals, simplify complex transactions, and protect investments and intellectual property has led to unprecedented levels of wealth creation for nations and people, and is arguably the most consequential innovation of the last millennium.

Your issue with VW has nothing to do with corporate personhood, it has to do with a lack of criminal penalties for certain civil regulations. There are, of course, plenty of corporate crimes that do lead to jail time (though I hope you're joking about the guillotine). Call your representatives in congress and ask them to expand the criminal statutes. But don't pass this off on corporate personhood which has likely benefitted you and all of us far more than any perceived harm.

>though I hope you're joking about the guillotine

I read that remark as this: If corporations are people legally, there should be certain crimes that lead to their dissolution. I assumed this was the proposal: If a corporation does something evil enough, its leaders going to prison and paying a fine isn't enough, it should face the corporate guillotine which revokes its incorporation.

What would that gain you? Wouldnt the same capital holders pool their wealth into a newly minted corporation to continue exploiting the resources they have accrued?

Are you going to seize the assets of the corporation and redistribute them? How is your proposed dissolution different from a fine big enough to bankrupt a company?

Just quickly on my phone before I run to grab the train. You dissolve the entity and sell the assests to pay back the costs of damage. The people left high and dry by the loss of investment get the signal that there is more risk in involving yourself in companies that can really stuff people over through negligence or greed

I mean really after the damage that was done, you don't think companies like BP should still exist.

How about all those resource companies walking over the people of the third world. etc etc.

As for cutting peoples heads off...Who knows what this new america will bring :)

> You dissolve the entity and sell the assests to pay back the costs of damage

VW could pay the damages in its particular case without dissolution. What would you do with the extra money after liquidating its assets? It seems like you're simply arguing for even bigger fines.

Not the parent.

If the company can pay for fines, fine. No need to dissolve them, but the leadership responsible still needs to face a judge. Just because you're part of a corporation, shouldn't mean you get to walk from crimes.

Kind of like this? https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/volkswagen-ag-agrees-plead-gu...

Just like that.

That link says that VW agreed to pay $2.8 billion in fines for defrauding 590,000 car owners and cheating on emissions tests. $2.8 billion/590K vehicles < $5K/vehicle.

That's a good start on fines. Now make them reimburse 590K owners. Let's see... A Jetta has an MSRP of >$20K. So, how about reimbursing $5K-$10K of every diesel vehicle that was fraudulently sold? Or, force VW to buy them all back at original MSRP. Then they could resell them for whatever they could get for them.

Would you pay $10K for a 2 year old cheater Jetta?

Edit: removed typo

> but the leadership responsible still needs to face a judge

There’s your problem, assuming that there is a way for leadership in a company not be responsible. Managers being ‘responsible’ is the only argument for them being paid disproportionally more than the average worker. In turn, a manager should always be responsible for the actions of their underlings all the way to the top, regardless of personal involvement in or knowledge of those actions.

The idea that the management of a company could not be responsible for something done by that company (which, e.g. could have resulted in considerable savings for the company and its shareholders) is simply ludicrous.

There is several layers of leadership. The CEO might say, we need to make a product in this price range, and meeting the new regulations. Several layers below him, are the managers, that goes into the nitty gritty details of the engine and know what the engineers are doing. Is the CEO reponsible if the manager cheated and deliberately hid facts from the upper management, just to please them and make himself look better?

You could argue that they should have a seperate control instance, but that was what they had, and they cheated it anyway.

> Is the CEO reponsible if the manager cheated and deliberately hid facts from the upper management, just to please them and make himself look better?

Morally, certainly yes, that’s why they’re the CEO. Their only defence against responsibility is incapacity to fulfil their duties, in which case they should resign immediately.

It is naive to believe a CEO can know about everything. The job is to get out of the habit of running the company day to day, and focus on vision, strategy, and culture. It is entirely possible for the management levels below him to ignore orders, and cheat measures out in place to ensure this. As long as the CEO act accordingly when knowledge about this reaches him, he is doing a proper job. It will never be possible to totally control things with an orginazation so large that you need several layers of management. You do put trust into the lower layers, no matter how you do it.

Right, but the CEO needs to instill a culture of not cheating. If the CEO has that culture (and can show it - lots of ethics training and other decisions that reinforce the idea that the company doesn't violate those rules) then you go down the chain to the rouge manager who hid his action.

This isn't just a theory. On of my companies competitors (I do not know which, I was just given it as an example) was caught bribing officials in China. After investigation it was decided that it was a rouge manager and not the CEO: they has a policy of not bribing, everyone was trained in recognizing how something (even a meal) could be seen as a bribe, and when other unethical action had been taken in the past the company took action to stop it and treated the whistle-blowers well. The CEO got off because he did everything in his power to ensure this wouldn't happen.

Exactly. Great example of why not to simply punish all the way to the top because they're "morally responsible".

Exactly! We need to stop questioning if the leaders are responsible. They are! The CEO is responsible for the whole company. If something bad happens, and he doesn't know about it he is still responsible. He is responsible for knowing, and he failed to find out. We need to put the CEO on the side of the law.

>What would that gain you? Wouldnt the same capital holders pool their wealth into a newly minted corporation to continue exploiting the resources they have accrued?

And the small-timers, with their meagre holdings and pension funds would be wiped out.

Corporations aren't monolithic; they are a collection of people working for and owning stake in. Their dissolution wouldn't be small and contained, it would be large and messy.

>What would that gain you?

This is a deterrent and would be very disruptive to the owners conducting business. It would discourage investors from elevating questionable people to boards of directors.

It could be something like this: 1. Sell/auction assets 2. Pay fines and damages and debts 3. Split remaining proceeds amongst non-legally culpable share holders

Right, but one of the issues is that a corporate "person" isn't the same as an individual person, and they don't overlap completely. They are only treated as persons under the law with regard to certain rights/obligations (sue and be sued, open a bank account, pay taxes, etc). But a corporation isn't a person for purposes of criminal culpability; i.e. you could never arrest a corporation for murder. Though corporations are just groups of individuals who themselves could absolutely be guilty of crimes.

There's a whole section in the Wikipedia article on corporate personhood that addresses these misconceptions[1].

I guess the real world "corporate guillotine" is for a corporation to be sued/fined out of existence or go bankrupt, all of which can happen due to gross negligence, bad behavior, or criminal behavior (see: Gawker Media, Bear Stearns, etc). But obviously jail is reserved for individuals who commit actual crimes, not corporations who are, after all, merely legal vehicles for pooling resources.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood#Misconcep...

In some jurisdictions (e.g. France) corporations can be subjected to criminal prosecution. The penalty can include forced dissolution of the enterprise.

>Though corporations are just groups of individuals who themselves could absolutely be guilty of crimes.

...or completely innocent of crimes.

I think it's important to remember that when there's talk about beheading corporate executives (and this isn't the first time I've read that on these forums): people are more likely to be innocent than not.

Killing off one of the largest employers in the world is a volatile maneuver. Surely there should be consequences, however perhaps a tier-based system for violations is needed. Suddenly closing the door on .... GM for example would be catastrophic for the US(hence the government bailout many economists supported). It may be that to properly punish or deter corporations from malicious decisions, the board of directors and majority stock holders should be punished too.

GM should have been allowed to fail.

Because, of course, no sensible capitalist would have stood by and watched all those assests disappear. Toyota would have bought a factory here, Nissan a factory there. Robots would have been sold off, etc.

Ford and Hyundai would have ramped up production and would have needed additional employees. And somebody would have stepped in to buy what was left of GM for 10 cents on the dollar.

It would have been very disruptive, yes. But within two years or so, the market would have adjusted. And there would be some incentive to not have anyone get too big to fail. As it stands, the incentive is to not let anyone be punished too much no matter how bad they act.

Wells Fargo should have gone out of business when thousands of employees were caught stealing from customers. Every shareholder should have lost everything. Of course the shareholders didn't commit the offence, but it would teach a lesson to be more responsible in investments, and make sure that the companies you invest in play square.

It might give Boards a different set of priorities when they negotiate the contracts of CEOs.

Limited liability has nothing to do with personhood. Which is very recent and very specific. Personhood is not any of the things you listed, those are features of basic corporation without personhood. Corporations worked fine for several hundred years. Granting them the rights but not the responsibilities of humans was wholly unnecessary and a mistake.

Corporations never existed without personhood; juridical personhood is a key factor was what historically distinguished corporations from earlier forms of business organization which did not create distinct legal persons.

I think you misunderstand corporate personhood. It absolutely includes all the things I mentioned. This article[1] has a good overview of the topic which includes a quote from the US Code: "In determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, unless the context indicates otherwise—the words "person" and "whoever" include corporations, companies, associations, firms, partnerships, societies, and joint stock companies, as well as individuals."

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood

>Corporate personhood is a long standing legal principle stretching back at least 400 years to the first joint stock corporations

Equating modern corporations to the limited government granted corporation (permitted only for a limited and explicitly stated purpose [like building a bridge or railroad] in the public benefit) of 400 years ago and the nearly limitless powers of a corporation leveraged out of the 14th Amendment is a bit dishonest.

"The Corporation" gave a good summary of how the 14th amendment (passed to protect the rights of the newly freed slaves) was hijacked by corporate lawyers to dismantle the traditional limitations on corporations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qNmV4Iv0GE

It's easy to talk about a corporate death penalty, but that's not really in the interest of society.

Take Arthur Andersen. After the Enron scandal, Arthur Andersen was basically split up and absorbed into the other accounting firms, especially Deloitte and EY. Are we really better off having the Big Four accounting firms instead of the Big Five? I'd say we need more competition, not less.

Not to mention the many innocent parties around the world who lost out due to the actions of a few.

I'd be in favour of sanctions that target those responsible and the chain upwards to the top, rather than a business as a whole. Even clawbacks of past bonuses, although that would be logistically very difficult.

> The emissions scandal should have ended VW.

The question is who such a punishment would have been directed towards. A few decisonmakers make something illegal, and the punishment is given to a hundred thousand employees, not to mention the owners of the cars without emissions cheating (most)?

This is the problem with megacorporations. Punishing them proportionally to the damage they make is unfair, because you are mostly punishing employees and consumers who knew nothing about the wrongdoing. Consequences need to be strong enough to be a deterrent but weak enough to not kill a large employer. That's nearly impossible.

Perhaps the most reasonable thing to do, as has been argued with banks, is to simply not allow megacorps to form, that is, no organization should be to big to fail because we want to allow the bad ones to fail.

Which is one of those pro-free-market, yet anti-corporate ideas that don't seem as popular as they should be as the political incentives are misaligned.

corporations don't commit crimes, people commit crimes. Obama was afraid to prosecute the rich and powerful, and now we have, well, you know.

What about all the people that work for VW, though? You can't hold all of those people accountable for what happened. It would be better to punish the individuals who encouraged it and those who knew but turned a blind a eye.

So setting up regulatory capture frameworks through cronies at the government to collect rents from people is not cheating since it happens to fit the definition of 'legal' and therefore fine to do?

That's not cheating, it's "growth-hacking". :O

Life isn't a game.

I beg to differ. Life is most definitely a game. It has rules and winning depends on numerous factors such as information, skill, strength, luck, connections, etc. I would argue that all other games which have been created are based on a subset of the rules of the first game: Life.

Every single rule can be broken, it just depends on if/when you get caught. You're still a cheater but as long as you can pay your way out of any hole you've found yourself in by the time you've gotten caught it's perfectly ok. Traditional morals notwithstanding, e.g. Lance Armstrong or any of the above.

You will fit right in here.

Only works if you can raise billions really fast so that you can have the clout/means to get the legislators to bend the rules for you.

You don't become King without stepping on everyone, and everything on your way to the top.

Another way to look at this: people have endured enough absurd protectionist media circus shows from US auto makers to no longer believe or care. Cry wolf scenario, in other words.

It's more effective to beg forgiveness than ask permission, especially when you are a rock star.

How did Google, Amazon, and Facebook cheat, in your opinion?

Google: copyright infringement. [Crawling sites, taking data at will, then slapping ads on it, not paying the authors a portion of their ads] [4]. Tax evasion. [5--look for google]

Amazon: sales tax avoidance (entire reason they exist) [1] later, federal tax evasion, including the double irish. [7]. Pusher of fake goods. [8] Pusher of fake reviews. Pusher of Chinese goods causing destructive env. practices.

Facebook: selling personal information [2]. tax evasion (double irish) [3]. Enabled zynga (et al) to extort from children [6]

1. http://www.taxjusticeblog.org/archive/2016/11/at_amazoncom_s...

2. https://consumerist.com/2014/06/12/facebook-is-now-selling-y...

3. https://www.ft.com/content/ca64f938-5dc0-11e3-95bd-00144feab...

4. https://techcrunch.com/2009/02/11/google-book-settlement-sit...

5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement

6. https://techcrunch.com/2009/11/06/zynga-scamville-mark-pinku...

7. http://www.businessinsider.com/double-irish-other-corporate-...

8. http://www.cnbc.com/2016/07/08/amazons-chinese-counterfeit-p...

I probably could type all night.

Tax avoidance is cheating? I guess I better not max out my 401k this year for the tax advantage! That would be cheating!

No but if you take your 401k money - withdraw it, create Irish shell companies, then have your employer pay the Irish shells , then tell the government you are Irish not a us citizen, liquidate all us holdings -- all to avoid IRS withholdings. Wtf? Please try it let me know how HRBlock goes.

Edit: under "do you have foreign accounts" check "no" as well. (Actually don't do any of this you will end up in federal prison)

It is kind of silly to blame Amazon for not paying sales tax. The legal obligation was on the buyer, not the seller, in out of state purchases. No company in Amazon's situation was paying sales tax.

Per your linked article: "Thanks to a decades-old Supreme Court case, e-retailers operating outside of a state’s borders cannot be compelled to collect the sales taxes owed by their customers. For years, Amazon.com took advantage of this provision." Amazon was specifically not cheating; they were following the law. The same law as other e-retailers and catalog retailers before them followed.

Facebook did (still does?) shadow profiles, which is illegal in EU, a sizeable part of their business.

I suspect Google collects and keeps personally identifiable information in ways that are illegal in EU too. And of course YouTube directly created and profited from copyright infringement.

And the internet industry as a whole has very effectively sabotaged the EU "cookie law", by implementing it in a way that annoys everyone and benefits nobody, pointing the blame at politicians while making big profits from privacy invasions of unsuspecting people.

Asking for forgiveness instead of permission is something I tell work colleagues.

If you own a VW/Seat/Skoda/Audi diesel car in US, you can give your car back and get your money. In EU, VW promises to fix the car by adding a 5cent placebo plastic pipe and a software update which lowers the performance and increases the diesel consumption (physics after all). In US VW has to pay billions, in EU VW has to pay nothing to speak of. Of course the German government is involved in this company as shareholder and probably knew about the cheating and probably the EU laws for diesel were altered some years ago because of this company. One would assume a more strict law enforcement that split that company into separate smaller VW, Sear, Skoda and Audi companies and disallow them to use that old Audi Diesel engine from the 1980s that causes the troubles. And one would assume VW has to be fine and pay to each state were the poisoned the inhabitants with their diesel fume. And oe would assume that TUV or whoever certified and tested the cars get fined as well.

You ignore that emission standards in Europe were less strict when it came to diesel pollution, so that 5cent placebo plastic pipe makes the cars compliant there. Emissions standards in Europe focused on C02 emissions and not so much on the toxic byproducts of diesel combustion. That's why the scandal is not such a big issue for Volkswagen in Europe.

I don't think that GP was ignoring it: "Of course the German government is involved in this company as shareholder and probably knew about the cheating and probably the EU laws for diesel were altered some years ago because of this company" - the point is that the EU car companies big into diesel specifically worked to have this pollution be made less critical in emissions testing...

The thing is diesel was pushed because of its low CO2 emissions and lower cost at the pump. Of course the German government wants to protect German auto companies now, but EU laws are comparatively lax on NOx emissions in part because the focus used to be entirely on CO2 emissions.

the laws are not the same in EU and USA. especially the laws regarding emissions

You're cherrypicking examples. Plenty of companies went under for cheating, e.g. Enron. Also if you think that these companies offer no consumer benefits but profit only through cheating then you're a fool.

That is how the world works. If you want to win, you have to be willing to do everything to get there. Not only for companies, but also in sport. Do you think the winners play fair?

You should really read the autobiography of Arnold Schwarzenegger, then you get an idea of what it takes to be able to win.

I've not read Arnold's autobiography but out of interest what are you referring to? If you are talking about his use of steroids etc (which I'm assuming is covered in the book?) then that isn't really cheating since in the case of professional bodybuilding since the sport is untested. There are federations that test and in that case using PEDs is cheating but in an untested federation, it's considered fair game.

Obviously, there are legal implications around the use of PEDs since many substances are illegal however I'm separating that out for this purpose.

I'm not referring to that, because at that time it was even legal.

For example what he did was looked at what parties the jury members went, and then go there and socialize with them. So they already knew him personally before going on stage. Or mess mentally with competitors, lie to them etc. Or when he was on stage with another bodybuilder for the final poses, acted as if he was about to leave the stage, the other one left, and then Arnold actually stayed and did a few more poses.

Maybe not all really illegal, but his book has lots of cases where he describes how he mentally messes or lies to people to get an advantage over them. That's how you win. Very good book if you have time to read it.

He even went to a ballet teacher to improve his poses. This guy did everything to get to the top, very inspiring.

It's been on my list to read for while now, I'll take a look.

Some of it, albeit in lighter sense is covered in document Pumping Iron. Great watch, I have more respect and disgust for him at the same time after seeing this.

But yeah, if you want to win at all costs, you start cutting corners, moral and others. Otherwise somebody else with even less moral approach will and will roll over you. Most giants got to the top by being like that (Gates, Jobs, Trump, pick anybody). There are no nice guys in top business, politics or any other power games.

Volkswagens cheating was a minor infraction, notable only for the $18B fine that was handed out by the US to throw some weight around, appease the domestic car industry and satisfy protectionist instincts.

Certainly it would be easy to fine Facebook, Google in Europe for privacy/monopoly violations (i.e. things that actually matter) with huge fines?

don't forget the biggest cheater of them all: apple

Volkswagen was the first who got caught and fined. There are more car brands with emissions that are too high.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/sep/19/many-car-...

And still, people only think about Volkswagen when we talk about high emissions. It's not even the worst offender.

It reminds me of how trucking companies would knowingly run their trailers heavier than the legal limit. The added profits outweighed the risk of a fine. However, I do not know is this is still in practice.

For all the criticism about their cheating of metrics and rules, I recently hired a VW Polo Diesel for a month to drive around Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and France and found it to be a comfortable, performant, nimble and all-round decent car. It handled doing 160 down the Autobahn quite comfortably without steering judder or anything I'd expected at higher speeds. It accelerated surprisingly well (not even considering it's a diesel!) all the way up to 100 making entry onto roads and highways a breeze, it had great steering which helped parking in cramped spots and did well for fuel efficiency - I was getting about 750km to a (45L, if I recall) tank in a combination of highway and town driving.

All in all, I think I did something over 5000km in total and it did it everything I could have asked for. I was quite impressed by it. Compare that with the Vauxhall I had in England for a couple of days, which was utter horseshit and struggled to accelerate up a moderate incline at 80 in 4th gear (I had to put it down to 3rd, rev the hell out of it and even then it was losing speed up the hill) and I can only say good things about the VW Polo.

All that acceleration is enabled by it violating the environmental laws of every western country.

> violating the environmental laws of every western country.

European nations aren't "western"?

They violated European laws too, that's why they're recalling them over the next two years.

I think he was saying, essentially, "not only European nations, but America as well"

European nations aren't "western"?

Actually European nations is what it originally meant. Western European.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_world

The term originally had a literal geographic meaning. It contrasted Europe with the cultures and civilizations of the Middle East and North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the remote Far East which early-modern Europeans saw as the East. In the contemporary cultural meaning, the phrase Western world includes Europe, as well as many countries of European colonial origin with substantial European ancestral populations in the Americas and Oceania.

Yes, I didn't realize Volkswagen violated European laws as well. So when he said "Every western nation", I was confused.

These terms were coined before the Americas were discovered by Europeans.

Europe was the West, then you have the Middle East, then the Far East (China, Japan). That was the whole world to them pretty much. When the Americas were discovered they were known as the New World, and eventually became known as the West as well (Due to the fact that most of our culture comes from Europe, eg. Western Culture).

Also the Near East, which was roughly the Ottoman Empire -- countries around the Mediterranean, Black and Red Seas. ("Mediterranean": middle of land.)

I suspect Rome (or some other city in Italy) is the centre of these terms, but I haven't looked for evidence of that.

Yeah, exactly. Our right to breathe clean air supersedes people's desires to drive around sporty diesels. This defense falls far short to me.

VW is not alone, Fiat Chrysler did the same thing.

http://money.cnn.com/2017/01/12/news/companies/epa-emissions...

the tricky question: did anybody figure out how to do a clean enough diesel engine without cheating?

i think its funny that European countries were pushing Diesel engines just because they emit less CO2, disregarding the NOx problem.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/dec/05/vw-diesel-c...

> the tricky question: did anybody figure out how to do a clean enough diesel engine without cheating

Yes. It is just more expensive in terms of maintenance because the urea-based cleaning liquid ("AdBlue") needs to be refilled by the dealer a lot more often if the exhaust scrubbing doesn't cheat and disable it half the time.

If you are interested in the details of the topic, I can recommend this CCC conference talk from last month:

https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-7904-software_defined_emissions

wow, thanks. That's really interesting. quite amazing.

I wouldn't know if that performance comes precisely because they violate those laws or not, so I'll take your word for it. Per my sibling comment, I wasn't dismissing those valid criticisms for their flouting of the laws. I was merely trying to point out that through whatever means they've produced what appeared to me to be reasonably compelling cars and so it wouldn't surprise me to see them getting significant sales volumes as a result.

You won't get a VW that still uses the software this is about any more from a rental agency. Firstly, they were recalled. Secondly, rental agencies in Germany (and most countries at similar levels of development as far as I can tell) have about a 12-month turnover in their fleet.

No one is debating the sporty performance of your VW. You dismiss all criticisms of them immediately and go on to talk about your lovely driving experience, making it seem like you either work for VW or have a vested interest in them, so your opinion instantly counts as worthless in my book. If a person had done what VW did they would be in jail, but because we as a society have determined that rich people are much more important than poor people, this will never happen.

I wasn't dismissing the criticisms; in fact I tried to disclaim that. My point was that notwithstanding the valid criticisms, they appear to be producing cars that in my mind would appeal to consumers so it doesn't surprise me if they were seeing significant sales. Whether they're capable of doing so precisely because they violate those rules is beyond my knowledge.

For the record, I absolutely do not work for VW or indeed in the automotive industry in any way, and I neither gain nor lose any value whatsoever if they flourish or go bankrupt. To repeat: I wasn't astroturfing, I was trying to express my own personal opinion on why they may see these sales in spite of their negative press about cheating emissions controls.

I agree that I could've made that more clear in the OP though, had I not just typed it as a stream of consciousness during my lunch break. I can't edit this disclaimer into the OP or reword it, though, so it will have to remain here instead.

> If a person had done what VW did they would be in jail

They might not be in jail, but they got charged:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/11/business/volkswagen-diese...

I find it hilarious how some people here are directing vitriol at VW because of emissions while it is perfectly acceptable, particularly in the US, to drive ridiculously oversized trucks. I'm sure that a Polo with manipulated software still has still a much better environmental record than your average truck. Correct me if I'm wrong.

The Polo is a great car. Here in Europe diesel is the most used fuel, and cars are fast enough if not faster than gas engines.

But have you driven behind a diesel that floored the gas pedal? Have you seen that smoke? It's a good thing that diesel is on its way out due to hybrid technology. And VW makes great gas engines as well.

Frankly this is a vanity metric anyways. Toyota's brake recall back around 2010 was directly related to its rapid global production expansion in an effort to become #1 in sales volume. Their QC and reliability/consistency across geographies suffered as a result.

Iirc the CEO himself was quoted saying the company lost sight of what should really matter -- making products that fulfill the needs and desires of their customers. (sorry, it's been many years so I can't really pull up the source)

When's the last time anyone's said "hey look at this #1 by sales volume car I just got"?

> Frankly this is a vanity metric anyways.

Not really. The German government (through the federal government, the state of Lower Saxony, and the investment bank of the council of states) owns a large share of VW, and so a lot of this money goes directly back into the tax budget.

I was sort of wondering why VW wasn't fined to the extent of the value of the company minus $1, or some similar scheme to effectively nationalize the company. I guess that wouldn’t accomplish much…

Being in automotive embedded industry, I'm sad to report that Toyota's unintended acceleration doesn't have a single traceable cause. It's result of sloppiness and bad practices across the industry.

I wish I could post some code here for your inspection. Suffice to say that what I've encountered is 90s-style C code with technical debt that noone wants to pay. Once I stumbled upon some code that was actually well structured and readable. Turned out it was open-source graphics stack, developed outside the automotive industry. Some modern practices are slowly being incorporated, but the industry is to inert to catch up. It's not only about developers, but there are also serious issues with tooling, determining project priorities, on-site and off-site communication, labor outsourcing and quality control.

Strategic law-breaking pays off more often than not.

In all seriousness, it shouldn't be much of a surprise given all the properties VW owns: Volkswagen, Audi, Porsche, Lamborghini, Bentley, SEAT, etc.

The number in question is vehicles sold, so the only relevant brands here are Volkswagen and Audi, really. Toyota also has Lexus and Scion.

Not any more, Scion was shut down as a failed experiment last year.

The cheaper European brands like Skoda and SEAT also likely have significant volume. Skoda, for example, sold over a million vehicles—a non-trivial 10% of VW group's total.

Audi sold something like 1.8M, probably with better margins than Skoda, so it's certainly a more important brand, but SEAT and Skoda aren't trivial either.

Just in terms of car sales, SEAT + Skoda ≈ Audi.

Seat and skoda are only popular in handful of small European countries, vw is popular around the globe.

Skodas are quite popular in India

there aren't many cars in India compared to US or even some small European countries.

The brands that you are dismissing out of hand sell, in aggregate, several million vehicles per year worldwide. That definitely moves the needle.

You are ignorant. http://apps.who.int/gho/data/node.main.A995

India 159m, USA 265m registered vehicles. India is the 6th largest producer of vehicles.

Vast majority of those are 2 and 3 wheelers, we are not talking about those.

If we could buy Seat and/or Skoda in the states, I bet they would sell rather well. Kia and Hyundai are no longer "bargain" vehicles as they were in the past.

SEAT does pretty well in Mexico.

https://i.redditmedia.com/dMeUIv2q7ReJRwusmsvEO_n331WdcBEcIX...

I'm interested you call SEAT and Skoda cheaper, I'd label them mid-market.

Skoda as well - (a million cars a year)

I guess the whole 'cheating on the emissions tests' scandal didn't hurt them too bad. Here I thought it would destroy them. Silly me!

I'm honestly not sure the public really cared about this - was anyone really surprised that this was happening? Most people I spoke to at the time seemed to be of the opinion that all the other manufacturers would be found out next. My friend bought a Golf the week after the scandal broke; I've bought a Golf GTI and a Polo in the last six months. They're just, well, pretty decent cars.

Well in the US, Diesel isn't very popular so the impact won't be as big, but people in Europe at least are going to rethink about getting Diesel, and the governments there might reconsider the big tax break they give to diesel engine which are supposed to be cleaner than gasoline (making diesel cheaper at the pump than regular gasoline for consumers in Europe).

Now we discovered that it's not only VW, but many car makers, so people aren't mad at VW as much as they were at the beginning of the Diesel-gate scandal.

I would have boycotted VW for life if they were the only one doing it. I'm certainly boycotting their diesel engines.

I thought it was only the tyrannically strict California emissions tests that they cheated on? The cars met standard emissions limits, unless I'm mistaken. Was it even an issue in Europe? I thought their standards were even more relaxed.

They were fined by the EPA it wasn't just a California thing. Other governments have also taken some actions:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal#G...

For instance, in Canada there is a buyback/rebate program.

You are mistaken on US regulation. They did not meet NOX emission limits in the US. Europe has stricter fuel regulation, less strict emission regulation so it was probably cool there. Every TDI model over there is usually tuned for better performance.

Oh well, my chariot of lies gets bought back in 2 days. Best investment ever in a car! Since I got my parents and 4 other friends to buy TDI's too when they saw the mileage I was getting, they are all ecstatic that the cars are getting bought back at well over market. Imma buy a Chevy Cruze Diesel once the standard hatchback gets released. Until then I'll find a pre-ban TDI or maybe some other beater to get me through the year.

Added bonus: They tried to cheat me out of repairing the cheater emission system that failed just outside of the federal emissions warranty at 60k miles. I told them if they could program it to cheat, they could program it to overheat the DPF and cause it to crack and fail. Got a free replacement from that :)

Added bonus #2: Since I also suggested my parents get one before the scandal broke, they tried to cheat them out of a AdBlue urea heater (piss tank heater) claiming it would not be repairable under federal emissions because it wasn't directly a part of the emissions. The company finally bowed to the massive number of complaints on tdiclub and related forums and covered that as well.

So... they screwed you and your family over three times, and you're a happy customer?

Don't get me wrong, the above was annoying. But they were forced to pay for it and I came out ahead. There's no doubt in my mind that my 2012 model still polluted less than my former 1998 model. There were many times before the scandal broke that I considered removal of the DPF component to further improve efficiency. This would not have affected the NOX output, but would have reduced weight, fuel consumption, and cosmetic appeal. I wasn't keen on having the car blow raw diesel into the exhaust to regenerate the filter every few hundred miles. Would have averaged 50mpg instead of mid-40's...

I put over 100k mi on the car and will have received approx $19k for it after the goodwill + buyback. Total cost of ownership for 4 years of about $6k excluding fuel which cost about half as much as a gasser (savings was anywhere between $3-6k). So yeah, pretty happy all things considered.

Since VW has stopped selling diesels in the US, and said they don't plan to reintroduce them, I'm not sure a boycott of that drivetrain is going to have much effect on them.

Fortunately for Europe, most countries have been strengthening incentives not to buy diesel, since they have always contributed more to smog problems -- and the push away from diesel started long before VW got caught screwing the tests over.

> they're just, well, pretty decent

Unlike their drivers, apparently.

Most people wouldn't be surprised the car was engineered to do well under the test, but having an algorithm which detects the test is occurring, and including an actual vial of urea which is used only under those conditions. That is above and beyond.

I, for one, was very surprised this was happening. I don't know the first thing about calculating the emissions from my car...is there a noticeable smell or visible difference between cars that emit less vs more? Since I don't know anything about the topic, my default assumption is the car manufacturers are playing by the rules.

Although, once the news broke I did think we'd be hearing about other manufacturers too.

TBH, the old way of measuring emissions for diesel was to look out the back and see if there was a black cloud forming at idle and with slight throttle applied. Maybe California actually measured more, out east they didn't. It wasn't until model year 2007 that new regulation kicked in that made things a lot more strict.

For this emission issue, there was increased NOX coming out the pipe. The NOX by itself isn't a huge issue... it's when it combined with volatile organic compounds (VOC's) from trees'n shit. Then magic happens under the sun and it combines with carbon to become smog (ozone), which blows into cities and gives the kids asthma.

Some further reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropospheric_ozone

EDIT: The old test handled particulate emissions... the DPF worked on these cars and no black smoke appeared until they programmed it to fail and crack (like mine!), you can't see NOX and I don't think it has a distinct smell...

They've only now, in 2017, started the return program for the vehicles mentioned in that lawsuit, so this statistic probably doesn't reflect those returns yet.

Sales don't factor in returns. If you sell a car and it's later returned, it still counts as a sale on the books.

In terms of bookkeeping, VW knew how much it roughly had to write off as soon as April 2016.

I blame the regulators just as much as VW for making shitty tests that gave too much incentive to cheat (which wouldn't have been difficult to detect or eliminate).

I also own a Jetta which I've been very happy with for ~8 years. I don't get any sense that they were cheating on the quality of my car, and it seems justice is being done for the cheating on tests.

The EPA's restrictions were mostly arbitrary and too restrictive, in my opinion. The European rules are more than sufficient. I don't think there's much moral issue with breaking more-or-less pointless regulations.

There's a local dealer who sells VWs and Mazdas. The Mazdas outsell VW 2:1, but they have 4x as many VW technicians.

I had two VWs: a Jetta and a Passat. Both required an astonishing amount of maintenance compared to the Toyota Camry I had before. VW has really mastered the art of "this feels well-engineered" without actually being well-engineered.

My current car is a Ford Flex and frankly I love it. It's not a perfect car but so far so good. It has the same solid feel as the VWs did. I hope it turns out to be more true. I wish the rest of Ford's cars felt as good as the Flex. Maybe they do, but I didn't want to try a Fiesta or a Taurus.

I've had friends who have owned VW's and I've heard the same things about them and German cars in general.

I purchased my first Mazda a few years ago and I'm shocked at how well-engineered it is, how easy it is to maintain it, and how much nicer the service experience is than it was for Honda and Acura.

VWs are very unreliable. Every year they end up below avarage in reliability tests (Honda and Toyota always share the top).

But I think people buy them because they look great.

I owned multiple VWs but never will buy a VW again. And because my Mazda keeps on going I think I will be a Mazda owner for a long time to come.

Not my experience - we've had 5 VW group cars in the last 15 year or so (VW, Skoda, Audi) and not one of them has required anything other than regular servicing.

Now when I had a BMW that was never out of the dealers.

I guess people got tired of driving boring cars with high resale value and luxury cars with missing front-ends. ;-)

Yup. I drive a Japanese four-door sedan. It's twelve years old. 156k miles. Runs great. Paid for. But, yeah, I'm bored.

Do VW's numbers include their self-registrations, which make up 30% of their "sales"? Explanation: http://dailykanban.com/2014/05/that-car-filled-test-track-ac... (towards the end).

Something like half the sales are in China. They don't sell a diesel there. Across the rest of the world sales are way down.

They would be way ahead of Toyota if they didn't cheat.

The other thing to remember is that cars are engineered a few years out. It will be a while before they compromise quality to make up for the large fines.

Cheating doesn't mean you win.

> It will be a while before they compromise quality to make up for the large fines.

That's not how business works. Absent an existential threat, their calculus regarding the quality level required for optimising profit is not influenced by the fine.

I'm well over 200,000 miles on my '98 Land Cruiser and looking for a replacement, but frankly, Toyota's current offerings aren't looking too hot...

The 200 series land cruiser is trending towards a suburb-mobile and is basically unsuited for offroad use, whereas the 70-, 80- and 100-series are awesome for offroading, even in stock off-the-lot configuration. The 4Runner is a decent offroad vehicle, but doesn't have the same legendary over-engineering as the Land Cruiser.

I might just try to keep my 100-series going for another few hundred thousand miles.

I am disappointed in Toyota's current offerings. Take a look at what is on the lot today and what was on the lot in 1997. 20 years ago you could pick up a world-class Supra or a proper Land Cruiser or a Tacoma or a Camry or Corolla that could practically be the last commuter car you ever need. All of them stubbornly reliable. many of the cars Toyota had on the lot in 1997 still sell for close to their retail price!

Today what do you get? I guess the Camry and Corolla are still good cars but I'm not convinced the reliability is still there. The Prius is "innovative" in some sense but it isn't the kind of vehicle the Supra and Land Cruiser were. There doesn't seem to be anything interesting or exciting on the lot from Toyota anymore.

What about the Toyota 86? 2-door, rear-wheel drive. Other than that I agree with you for the most part.

edit: http://www.toyota.com/86/

It's a Subaru Impreza with a different body. It's a nice car but it isn't a Toyota. They also tried to market it in the US as a Scion until that experiment also failed.

It's not a real Toyota - it was designed and built by Subaru.

It was designed by Tetsuya Tada at Toyota. Toyota had a complete concept car they were showing before they asked Subaru to get involved. Subaru ended up contributing the engine, but the rest is largely Toyota. They are built by Subaru though.

The non-Subaru concept was the FT-HS which never made it into production. The Toyota 86 uses an Impreza chassis and engine. Mechanically it's a Subaru. AFAIK the Toyota/Scion versions may have a slightly different engine but it's still a Subaru boxer.

Also, Toyota owns significant portion of Subaru.

I have a 2011 Toyota Yaris I've been pretty happy with it. I went from a four door 1.6L engine car (2002 Kia Rio) to the three door 1.4L Yaris. At the time I purchased the Yaris I was 50/50 toss between it and a Mazda 3. I ended up getting offered a good deal of the Toyota so went with it, no regrets since then.

I'm single and live in the city so fuel economy and ease of parking trumps everything else for me.

Yeah they make good commuter cars like your Yaris and the new Corollas have a lot of great features but take a look at what Toyota was building back in the 90s before they wanted to become the biggest in the world. They had a much more diverse offering with at least a few exciting if low volume cars.

>fuel economy and ease of parking trumps everything else for me.

What about safety? I rented a Yaris once and felt very vulnerable. Maybe it depends on where you live.

The Tacoma is still there? That's what I'm buying next time. According to all the studies, the reliability is still there too. It's all probability, doesn't make it a tank or bulletproof but Toyota is still the best bet other than Lexus.

The models don't change much because that's a part of maintaining quality and reliability. The US companies are kings of constant rehashing and quality suffers. If I want a cool car I'll buy a Dodge Hellcat or a Tesla.. otherwise I'm going Toyota next time. Tip of the hat though to Kia (and Hyundai), they've really been giving everyone fits.

The Tacoma is still available and still excellent but the Tacomas they built in the mid 90s are still in very high demand. My point in bringing them up is that they had a full lineup of truly excellent vehicles. The new ones are great pickups but they are expensive and like everything else awfully bloated.

In the 90s you could get an all wheel drive turbocharged Celica or a twin turbocharged Supra or the lightweight MR2 which was also available with a turbo. All of those cars were still as reliable as you would expect from Toyota but weren't simple appliances to get from A to B.

In the years since then Toyota has completely forgotten how to build an interesting car and has lost sight of what "car people" find appealing about cars. Toyotas aren't bad at all, the company just forgot about a bunch of the really cool stuff they used to do and I am disappointed about that because I think they could still do a lot of it.

If Dodge can build the Hellcat and Chevy can build the ZR-1 why can't Toyota build a proper Supra? I guess Lexus had the house-on-wheels LF-A but that's not going to fill the gap left by the Celica, Supra and MR2.

I've often wondered the same. I remember my doctor in the 90s had a Supra. But I've felt for a while now that the heydays of interesting cars are over. Where I'm at, most people aren't buying new cars like we were back then. I'm ok with Toyota's lineup because I just want the best possible chances at low to no maintenance. Excitement post 9/11 just means no WW3. But they could use a jolt for sure, they at least need the Supra though the 86 is a nice gesture. I don't understand what you mean by Tacomas being expensive or 'bloated'. The price seems about right and reasonable to me for a 4x4 pickup compared to their competition.

Totally agreed. The Tacoma is bloated and expensive relative to its older siblings but not it's current day competition. More of a commment on all vehicles getting bigger and having more buttons added over the years. Time will tell but I don't think a 2017 Tacoma will hold up as well after 20 years as a 1997 Tacoma. That's not necessarily a bad thing either I just distrust all the gadgets from a long-term reliability standpoint.

Ah yeah, I understand now. Yeah I've always been a rollup windows sort of buyer myself. I drive a standard transmission right now, which is pretty unpopular with the smartphone drivers who need that hand to drive while looking down. Pretty tough to get rollup window level of technology anymore. The one thing I do insist on is no useless tied down screen/navigation system, AM/FM only with real buttons. One of these[0] with my iPhone is about as good as it gets for navigation.

Tacomas have gotten a little more pumped up over time.. I just want the most efficient small truck I can get (that isn't from GM, whom I've dealt with their corporate a couple times and no thanks to further purchases). Truck designs can stop impressing the rednecks with the taller, bigger trucks and make something with a much lower tailgate height so that I can actually use the truck. I'm not interested in it to be a cool guy, interested in gas efficient truck that I can use to get stuff done and pull a reasonable size trailer.

It's odd as a technical person to say I prefer less technology in many cases but it's true. There's a level of sensibility, what's really needed and what works most reliably.

[0]http://a.co/5ssSfUG

So much this. When I was in college I worked for a farmer as an equipment mechanic. He had a 1999 Chevrolet Silverado 2500. It had plenty of power, traction and ground clearance to get around the farm with enough cargo space for a replacement tractor tire and enough towing capacity to pull a 20' trailer down the freeway. All while carrying all of our tools.

It did all of this with a bed that was low enough to reach into from the side without climbing on anything and with a tailgate low enough I could load relatively heavy items without the need of a lift or a second set of arms.

I look at the new F-150 with the ladder in the tailgate and I think that's completely missing the point.

Interesting. I was from a rural area and worked on a farm as well. Now I'm a city-boy(!) trying to get ahead and failing at that. The Chevys were always good about not sitting too high. I haven't looked at the new ones other than the diesel Colorado, nice setup shame I'll never own one. I would need a substantial pile of rebates to buy Chevy/Ford/Ram anyway. That's the Achilles' heel of the Fords and the ladder is really hilarious. I've heard bad things about the aluminum beds too from dealers.

Their whole thing about "military grade aluminum" makes me laugh every time. I associate it with the quote about the Saturn V being 2 million parts made by the lowest bidder on a government contract.

I don't want military grade anything. I want something that will last me 20 years without hesitation.

I remember lusting after the twin turbo Supra back in my teens. "Porsche performance at a Toyota price" is the quote from a car magazine I remember (Car & Driver maybe?) Never actually drove one, but maybe I'll include them on the list for my next car.

Non-molested versions still sell for close to or even over(!) original retail price.

The 2JZ-GTE is a marvel of an engine. It's got a turbocharged turbocharger! How cool is that!?

> 20 years ago you could pick up a world-class Supra or a proper Land Cruiser or a Tacoma or a Camry or Corolla that could practically be the last commuter car you ever need. All of them stubbornly reliable. many of the cars Toyota had on the lot in 1997 still sell for close to their retail price!

The mid-90s to early 2000s were a golden era for Japanese cars. I dream of importing a Nissan Silvia S15[1] with the legendary SR20 engine. It's quite feasible, especially if you live in a left hand drive country (warning: it's complicated getting some of these cars into the US[2]). The Skylines of that era (e.g. the blue and silver one from the Fast and the Furious 2) still sell for insane money (around €35k-45k last time I checked, depending on the model and trim), they are really hot items to import from Japan. Also, the Hilux of the era is virtually indestructible. Top Gear famously demolished a building with a Hilux perched on top[3], and the engine still worked afterwards.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-bcPNJzwtA

[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/cars/comments/1627s5/iama_guy_who_i...

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnWKz7Cthkk

Amazing! Thanks for the link.

Exactly! In a past life I had purchased a 1973 S30 with the intention of swapping in an LS-1 from an old Camaro, GTO or Corvette. I quickly changed my mind on that and decided on an RB26DETT because it's still a Nissan motor and the price isn't much different.

Life happened and that project had to be abandoned but I would really like to give it a go one of these days. At this point I think the SR20DET is the ideal motor for an S30.

The RB26 still has a very strong appeal however...

e: If you have not already seen them you may find Doug DeMuro's Skyline exploits entertaining: https://youtu.be/5eFA3cwfR3E

I had a Volkswagen Scirocco. That car looks nice and had a reasonable price range.

But that car was the stuff of nightmares. Just google "scirocco dsg gearbox problems". I simply cannot imagine why a huge car manufacturer could produce such a faulty car.

Apparently, scirocco is not the only model to be affected by this.

> I simply cannot imagine why a huge car manufacturer could produce such a faulty car.

Sadly, American Car companies create lots of faulty cars as well. Not sure why.

Because cars are hard to make?

It might be a good idea to start hoarding Toyotas, if you are so inclined, before the tariff erases the savings on maintenance and repair.

Toyota makes an immense number of vehicles in the US, with American labor. They'll easily dodge most of the effect of any tariffs.

>Just google "scirocco dsg gearbox problems"

Or Google "subaru head gasket issues", or "tesla drive unit failure".

I don't think there's a manufacturer that can avoid having runs of faulty lines.

I'm on my second Tacoma (sold my first to move overseas) and it has been the most reliable vehicle I've ever owned. My only VW experience has been a 71 bug that I'd have to fix on the side of the road once a month, so I can't "really" speak to VW reliability :)

Just to point out that this is purely anecdotal. If you bought the 71 bug in any other era except for the early 70s, you probably didn't buy it for exceptional reliability.

This is very puzzling for me. You know, volkswagen as volkswagen, they will do anything to increase profit, but how it's possible that people buy those? Because it's not that thet they produced more cars, someone buy it. I can't understand how company having such long miserable history of cheating it's own customers (one sample, manufacturing defected TFSI engines they refuse to repair under warranty), and society as a whole (poisoned by deadly particles that shouldn't be emitted), still is commonly desired.

I was searching for new in 2015, also considering VW, but they were overpriced, especially if you don't want basic version. After some research we decided to buy Toyota. They were maybe little delayed in terms of design and equipment, even slightly old-fashioned. But on the other hand they have long history of solid reliability. Of cource they have some bummers (like some d4-d engines), but at least Toyota always tried to fix them, even after warranty.

>> They are were maybe little delayed in terms of design and equipment, even slightly old-fashioned.

You answered yourself.

>>> You answered yourself.

True. But tought that more customers will choose more reliable cars, especially if future of VW after emission scandal was not so certain.

Last year they updated most models, new RAV4, Avensis, Corolla are much more suited to current trends. Looks like new C-HR will be popular in it's segment, so interesting how stats will look this year.

Asian cars, Japanese in particular, are generally less advanced. They do not use turbocharged gas engines, have less bells and whistles inside and have worse design for many European tastes. That's just it.

Of course, there are exceptions - Mazda is considered to look pretty cool across whole model range. Still, for my use, I much prefer my 1.4 TSI than whatever I saw available in Asian cars.

Volkswagen cheating was unacceptable and I'm pretty happy they got their asses handed to them over the issue. At the same time I'm aware that American diesel regulations are a way to protect your own brands, since Americans don't have the tech to make their own - you're more gas/hybrid/electric market.

IMHO

They aren't as overpriced in Europe, parts are cheaper which offsets the relatively lousy reliability (compared to Japanese cars), also the second-hand car market and the second hand parts market are huge here.

Basically Japanese cars ARE considered more reliable, but precisely for that reason they're seen as more premium than VW, which itself is the most expensive of "ordinary" brands.

Can't help thinking/believing a fair number of people are going to encounter this headline in the media and think, "Too big to fail." As in, the fix is in, for such corporations.

Which will play right into the current political climate.

Remember reading comments 3 months ago on HN about how VW will be bankrupt in 15 years and Tesla will be the world's biggest car manufacturer.

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