I think people might be a tad bit outraged, less so about the problem, more so about the response. "it's just a car? You've been telling me in all your advertisements that it is the pinnacle of german engineering. If I wanted to deal with problems in the design and live with them, I would have gone with your much cheaper competitors."
However, we shall see what they say tomorrow.
Apple could have handled this much better saying it is a high-performance, tuned antenna. If you choose to operate it correctly you get superior performance; or you can ignore it and get the same performance as any other hidden antenna.
Outright denial of something which is shown in several seemingly honest online videos was a bad move all around. It was socially equivalent to publicly calling some of their early adopting customers liars. Of course the public reacted badly to it and didn't let the matter drop.