Well, if somebody actually believes the garbage that the ads claim, so be it
I don’t buy cars based on advertisements, slogans, etc.
jtsanders: I remember a study that discovered at least half of “drivers” tested were uncomfortable at .27 lateral Gs. I have been stuck behind many of them. Now that I’m retired and never in a hurry I tend to just feel sorry for them.
These numbers are probably wrong but the idea was they were selling 200K cars in the US and they decided they would sell 800K cars. Huh? How were they going to do that? Then they only ended up selling 400K cars. Now they are mad because they didn’t make the 800K goal with a Folks Wagon to compete with Toyota. That was their stupid goal. I have a goal to net $2 million this year. I don’t have a clue how to get there but that’s my goal.; We’ll see how I do. Should have simply fired the board and the CEO and the marketing genius’. Oh wait, they can’t. They’re family. Hitler rolls over in his grave again.
@db4690, I don’t buy cars or anything else based on ads, just like you. But I think many people are strongly influenced by them. Just not you and me.
I think this is just an ordinary run of the mill bargaining ploy. Try to get some US politicians on their side to help them out of the mess they’ve gotten themselves into.
If you want to substantially increase your sales, I would think you need to . . .
Sell cheap . . . according to that link, that was certainly NOT the case 
Convince people that your products are more high tech than the competition
Convince people your products are more reliable . . . yeah, that’s a good one :naughty:
it seems they didn’t do ANY of those things I just mentioned 
@GeorgeSanJose
I don’t think VW deserves to get any help from US politicians
VW made their bed, and now they have to lie in it
I’m not so sure it’ll hurt their market share. If I as a buyer discovered that my car manufacturer had found a way to make my car get better emissions test results but give me better performance when not hooked up to the machinery I’m not sure I’d be upset. I certainly would think twice about responding to a recall that would adversely affect my performance.
There is a small portion of the market that is more concerned about their car’s emissions than its performance… but I doubt if the bulk of the customer base thinks that way. No disrespect to those who do.
Now if somebody had sold me a Cavalier and told me it was a Cadillac… and charged me a Cadillac price… THEN I’d be ticked off!! 
They’re taking a big sales hit because of this, so a fair number of people care. And the billions in fines/lawsuits isn’t going away anytime soon, it seems.
Agree with @rocketman about the short-term memory thing. I’d add to his examples the Bridgestone / Firestone tires blowing out on the Ford Explorers, everybody said they’d have to change the name of the tires, didn’t happen. . . look at BP with the big oil spill the Exxon Valdez. . . once it blows over and falls off the front page people quickly forget. In the short term they’ll probably have to do some serious discounting to keep the iron moving, but in 3 to 5 years time it’ll be mostly as if it never happened, except for all the charges against earnings they’ll have to take to pay the fines and lawsuits.
If I owned a VW, especially a diesel. the damage is already done, Why get rid of the car now that it has already deprecated ? Now your best course of action is to drive it until the wheels fall off.