Das Scandal

The first car I drove required the athletic skills of a bobsled runner: it refused to start from a standing position. The second had a quaint habit of fading out on any road that was more than walking distance from a repair facility. And the third required the nerve of a Russian Roulette player: one cold day in six (usually the very day I had Something Very Important to do), it would not start at all. So let me declare right away that I have appreciated the steady increase in the general reliablity of automobilies over the past 30 or so years, and tip my hat to the engineers who have worked diligently to make sure my car actually starts and stays running regardless of position, location or weather.

I like to think of myself as understanding that a car is just a depreciating hunk of metal that is used to take you from point A to point B, and that there is very little point in having an emotional association with the darn thing. But that would be to ignore all of the effort to appeal to our self-image that goes into the marketing of cars. Want to turn heads and generate flirty gestures? Buy a Lexus! Want to show the world you’ve arrived? Buy a Buick! And perhaps you want to show the world that you care about fuel economy, performance and the environment all in one swell foop. In that case, you would, until just a few days ago, have bought, or at least shortlisted, a diesel-engined Volkwswagen.

Along with everyone else, I am gobsmacked at the stupidity of the company in trying to fool an emissions test. It’s not because it could have directed its brainpower towards trying to meet the standard rather than trying to game it. Nor is it because the outgoing president claimed he didn’t know anything about the scheme, which is just about as bad an indictment of his tenure as if he had admitted to participating in it. Nor is it because the company— and some of its employees—face gadzillions of dollars in possible fines, penalties and lawsuits. It’s because of the instant and lasting damage to the company’s hard won reputation.

The person who has bought the diesel-engined product now feels like a sucker. And the owners of the non diesel-engined Volkswagen feels like they have been set up for some second shoe of untrustworthiness to drop. Heck, I’ve never bought a Volkswagen and I feel personally offended. I’m only just beginning to realize that prior to Das Scandal, the name ‘Volkswagen’ conjured up a warm and fuzzy association—probably a result of its commercials. My favourite is one from the mid-1960s about two aging Tin Pan Alley songwriters who boast they can write a song about anything—until they are stumped by a request to write one about the technical upgrades in the Beetle (“Dish pistons optimized, compression ratio…”). The message: we’re focused on making continual technical improvements to the car, although they aren’t glamorous. A close second is the commercial that ran until just a few months ago featuring two little girls running a lemonade stand. They spy a Passat coming down the street and adroitly flip their sign over so that lemonade now sells for a dollar, not a quarter. The message: people will think you’re driving an expensive car when really you’re not. And now, all that goodwill has gone ‘poof.’

I realize Volkwagen has got plenty of company on the shady side of the automotive street. There were millions more vehicles recalled than were sold in Canada last year. However, the fact that other people shoot themselves in the foot doesn’t make it any more acceptable when you do it to yourself.

All of which makes you wonder why—or perhaps it explains why—Google (with a driverless car) and Apple (with an electric car) are poised to enter the automobile business. Google has announced that its car has a perfect safety record, although it has been involved in 16 accidents. Perfect, in the sense that the program that runs the car obeys highway rules to the letter and has never, driverlessly, created an accident; but 16 accidents in the sense that the program that operates the car can’t predict and adapt to the imperfections of other human drivers (like being rear-ended as a result of a sudden safety stop).

Maybe the driverless car is best operated in a driverless world. And maybe the car itself is best built by intelligent machines that don’t feel any need to cover up their failings. And maybe the marketing of cars should be held at arm’s length from those human factors that create warm and fuzzy feelings about lumps of metal. Who’s up for a singalong of “Dish pistons optimized, compression ratio”? Just for the good old times, when even supposedly reliable cars required bobsledding skills.

dsimmonds@wellingtontimes.ca