As kids in the 1980s, we played a game called Slug Bug.
As we rode in the back seat of our parents’ hideous station wagons, we’d watch out for Volkswagen Beetles, and the first kid to spot one called out the car’s color and punched his friend or sibling in the arm.
Now, all these years later, Volkswagen has delivered a punch of its own, right to our collective rib cage.
In case you’ve been living under a rock, Volkswagen recently wrote a new chapter in the Big Book of Evil Corporate Misdeeds. It’s accused of installing a “defeat device” in cars since 2009 that made them look clean to emissions inspectors while they spewed 40 times the legal amount of air pollutants.
So as we were dutifully replacing our lightbulbs to help save the planet, VW churned out 11 million cars designed to pour smog into the air like there’s no tomorrow, or at least like it doesn’t care if we all need gas masks tomorrow.
In our latest poll at HeraldNet.com, we asked whether you would ever consider buying a Volkswagen after the scandal.
Thirty-three percent said they’d never drive one anyway. That’s probably everyone who had to ride around in a VW van as a kid and is scarred by the experience. Another 23 percent said they would never drive one because VW has crossed a line.
That leaves almost half who might drive one: 34 percent said it’s not a deal-breaker, and another 10 percent said they’d consider a VW if the company can prove its cars are clean. But how would we know if they were cheating?
Maybe this time they’ll pinky-swear, but it’s going to be hard to ever believe VW again. If we let down our guard, we might end up with another nasty bruise.
— Doug Parry, @parryracer
For our next poll, we’d like to know what you think about an idea to use land at Paine Field for a historic aircraft center.
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