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I apologize in advance, but this feels rather un-German... What was the motivating factor in this? This blowout is going to affect so many of VW's lines, and their reputation.

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I think money oddly. I had a 98 Jetta TDI (Diesel). The trade off for 45 mpg was pokey performance, even with the turbo.

The new ones really drive with pep, like normal cars, so I think they thought they'd sell more with better performance. There is a not insignificant price premium for diesel vehicles.

Diesel owners are really really passionate about their cars (no time to redesign their web forums) and "Diesel Gate" is going to hit that loyalty hard.

Summary page with graphs:

http://forums.tdiclub.com/showthread.php?t=448336

It felt un-German up to about a week ago, now it is German and that's a very large problem for Germany. This will affect many more companies than just VW, 'made in Germany' used to stand for something and they just wrecked that (or at a minimum put a serious scratch and a dent in it).

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