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VW fix would have cost $335 per vehicle

Since the Volkswagen diesel kerfuffle began, Bosch, the world's largest auto supplier, has been hooked up to a bullhorn trying to make sure everyone knows its side of the story. Bosch supplied VW with the engine management testing software, including delivery and metering modules, that VW then used to skirt emissions laws in the US. Bosch told VW in 2007 that it was illegal to use the software in cars it planned to sell yet VW did it anyway, according to reports coming out in German newspapers Bild am Sonntag and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. That first warning came two years after VW started developing the small-displacement diesel, around the time that the two men pushing its development, then-brand chief Wolfgang Bernhard and engineer Rudolf Krebs, were telling their superiors that the engine needed AdBlue urea injection to pass US emissions. VW cost controllers wouldn't approve the AdBlue solution because it would add 300 euros ($335 US) to the cost of the vehicle. Bernhard and Krebs left the same year that Bosch advised VW about the software, two years before the engine went into production. That's when things get cloudy. A report in Automotive News says that when Martin Winterkorn took over in 2007 as head of the VW Group and brand, he asked Ulrich Hackenberg and Wolfgang Hatz to keep working on the engine, and "[the] engine then ended up in VW Group diesels" with that problematic software still intact. No one has yet pointed any fingers at this latter chain of command, but like a game of Clue, right now they're the professors in the library holding the candlesticks. Warnings didn't only come from the supplier: Frankfurter says VW's initial investigation has found that an engineer issued the same caution to the company in 2011. Neither Bosch nor VW would comment on the reports.

Automakers want to stop the EPA's fuel economy rules change, and why that's a shortsighted move

With a Trump Administration looming, the EPA moved quickly after the election to propose finalizing future fuel economy rules last week. The auto industry doesn't like that (surprise), and has started making moves to stop the EPA. Ford CEO Mark Fields said he wanted to lobby Trump to lower the standards, and now the Auto Alliance, a manufacturer group, is saying it will join the fight against cleaner cars. The Alliance represents 12 automakers: BMW, Fiat Chrysler, Ford, GM, Jaguar Land Rover, Mazda, Mercedes-Benz, Mitsubishi, Porsche, Toyota, VW, and Volvo. Gloria Bergquist, a spokesperson for the Alliance, told Automotive News that the "EPA's sudden and controversial move to propose auto regulations eight months early - even after Congress warned agencies about taking such steps while political appointees were packing their bags - calls out for congressional action to pause this rulemaking until a thoughtful policy review can occur." The EPA was going to consider public comments through April 2017, but then said it would move the deadline to the end of December. That means that it can finalize the rules before President Obama leaves office. The director of public affairs for the Consumer Federation of America, Jack Gillis, said on a conference call with reporters last week when the EPA originally announced its decision that it is unlikely that President Trump will be able to roll back these changes. Gillis also said on the same call that any attempt by the automakers to prevent these changes would be history repeating itself. "These are the same companies that fought airbags, and now promoting the fact that every car has multiple airbags," he said. "These are the same companies that fought the crash-test program, and now are promoting the crash-test ratings published by the government. So, it's clear that they're misperceiving the needs of the American consumer." There are more reasons the Allliance's pushback is flawed. Carol Lee Rawn, the transportation program director for Ceres, said on that call that the automotive industry is a global one, and many automakers are moving to global platforms to help them meet strict fuel economy rules around the world.

VW readying CC Shooting Brake?

This was bound to happen. Volkswagen's relentless drive for big volume has the brand mining seemingly every niche it can find for additional sales worldwide. And with its CLS Shooting Brake, fellow countryman Mercedes-Benz has already shown that a wagon based off of a "four-door coupe" can look dead sexy and command extra dollars. So it follows that the Volkswagen CC (whose existence is all but directly attributable to the success of the original CLS sedan) will also get a load-lugging variant. That's according to the UK's Autocar, which notes that the five-door will come in the CC's next generation.
According to the report, the next CC will be available in front and all-wheel drive variants with the usual assortment of gas and diesel four-cylinders found in the Wolfsburg empire, with the possibility of a gas plug-in hybrid model, too. The rakish estate will ride atop VW's MQB architecture, a shorter variant of which is also found underneath the new Golf. The scalable chassis is set to spread like kudzu throughout the company's lineup, but the CC probably won't happen until after the launch of the next European-market Passat in 2015.
Will we get it in North America? Hard to say. Volkswagen sells the standard CC saloon here, but not in particularly large numbers, and when the company moved to a North American-specific Passat, it dumped the wagon variant. The traditional VW estate apparently continues to pick up sales momentum abroad, however, making the CC Shooting Brake a seemingly natural fit for buyers who still want the utility of a two-box form but can afford to sacrifice a bit of cargo room in the name of style.