Watch out – Beetles about

After the week they’ve just had, it seems VW might need to prefix the name of the cute little “Up” car with the words “Royal Screw”, following the shock revelation that they rigged emission tests.

Senior Executives of the beleaguered Volkswagen have this week been using phrases like “endlessly sorry” and “totally screwed up” as they desperately attempt to minimise the damage caused by the scandal over the rigging of car emission tests for some of their diesel models in the US.

The figures are staggering, with 11 million vehicles worldwide involved, seemingly containing a device in their engines that can detect when a test is being carried out (compared to normal road driving conditions), and change performance to improve the figures.

Assumingly this device simply detects if there’s an argument taking place, someone had just spilt a coffee in the footwell, is singing badly along to the high bits of Bohemian Rhapsody, or the repeated phrase “are we there yet?” is audible, and goes into ‘diesel dupe’ mode if all of these are absent.

With their share price plummeting by a third in the two days following the story breaking, VW have put aside a staggering £4.7 billion to cover the costs of recalling half a million of their dodgy motors. To put that into context, that’s nearly as much as some top footballerists are paid.

And if your business card has the VW logo on it and contains “Exec” in the job title, it still manages to get even worse. US laws mean the firm could be fined up to £24k for every vehicle that fails to meet clear air rules. In case you haven’t got enough fingers and toes to “do the math”, that could amount to $18 billion in fines, which is almost as much I get paid for writing this column. Minus $18 billion.

The top brass could also face criminal charges. If you think your week has been fairly ropey, it’s comforting to know that someone is having a far, far, worse time than you. Head Honcho Martin Winterkorn quit on Wednesday, which probably wasn’t what he had in his diary for the week and means he’ll miss donuts Friday, but at least he gets to start the weekend early. Maybe he could go for a nice drive.

So, apart from the catastrophic share price crash, costs to recall the affected cars, possibly vast fines and potential legal action, how bad is it really?

Well, if you have even a passing care about the planet, you’re hardly going to be rushing down to your local dealer for a test drive, are you? And then there’s the fact that a bunch of other countries have opened their own investigations. If Herbie does go to Monte Carlo, he’d better make sure he doesn’t breathe out.

For the company that recently became the number 1 for global sales amongst car makers, it’s a devastating blow. Much like what comes out of their exhaust pipes, presumably.

This post first appeared as my "Thank grumpy it's Friday" column, in the North West Evening Mail, on the 25th of September 2015. You can view the version published by the paper on their website here

The opening paragraph received a major edit, removing the whole "Royal Screw Up" section - to be honest, I was expecting that to happen, but I was pleased to see they kept my title. I was particularly happy with that one, in a way that definitely borders on smugness.

This was another case of writing about an evolving news story being a risky business. I'd largely written the column on Tuesday, but had to change it a bit on Wednesday after the Chief Exec of VW resigned. Finishing it off and submitting it on Wednesday night meant anything happening after that before the paper hit the shops on Friday cold have left me looking decidedly out of date. Journalism-wise, obviously - I'm permanently out of date in all other areas of life.

Luckily, there were no earth-shattering developments, but it's one of the reasons I tend to shy away from current news.

I had included a paragraph originally which was going to be the last one, commenting on the irony of the USA being the country to discover this environmental scandal, when they haven't signed up to the Kyoto Protocol, but it felt a bit out of place, and would probably have resulted in a run in with people for/against America's stance on this - and I'm not that well-read on the subject.

Plus, the majority of the readers of this blog are residents of the USA....

(CD A-Z: Still on B... currently spinning Black's '87 album "Wonderful Life". Yes. Yes it is.)

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