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Dealers, owners feel betrayed by VW scandal

Bob Rand bought his Volkswagen Passat last year for its clean emissions and high gas mileage. He liked the car so much he convinced his son and a friend to buy one, too. Now, as Volkswagen comes clean about rigging diesel emissions to pass US tests, Rand is desperately trying to sell the fully loaded model with white leather seats for $10,000 below what he paid. His sole bite has been from a man who offered $7,500 on speculation that he could resell it in Mexico. "Volkswagen was somebody that you could rely on for cutting-edge products and quality and all those things and now you find out that they're not above lying just flat out," said Rand, who plans to join a class-action lawsuit against VW. "That's probably about as bad a thing as a company can do is lie to your face when you're buying a $35,000 car." Rand's anger at the world's top-selling car company was echoed Wednesday by private dealers, auto wholesalers and owners across the US as fallout from the smog test trickery mounted. The US Environmental Protection Agency first disclosed Friday that stealth software makes VW's 2009-2015 model cars powered by 2.0-liter diesel engines run cleaner during emissions tests than in actual driving. On Wednesday, CEO Martin Winterkorn resigned and took responsibility for the "irregularities" found by US inspectors - a scandal that has wiped out billions in the company's market value and raised the possibility of criminal investigations and billions more in fines. The revelations left dealers sitting on hundreds of diesel cars they could not sell. Many also dealt with a flood of angry calls, emails and tweets from Volkswagen owners who felt betrayed because they believed they had bought a car that polluted less without sacrificing the good gas mileage and performance that comes with a diesel engine. "I think their feet should be held to the fire." - Joe DeCarolis "I think their feet should be held to the fire. I think apologies don't mean anything when something is so premeditated," said Joe DeCarolis, of Cary, NC, who owns a 2012 TDI Jetta Sport Wagon — a car he bought after careful comparison shopping for its clean emissions and good gas mileage. Dealers can't give customers good answers because Volkswagen hasn't said a whole lot, said AutoNation CEO Mike Jackson, the leader of the largest auto dealership chain in the US.

UAW tactics called into question at VW's TN plant

The United Auto Workers is in hot water with some of the very workers it is trying to unionize at Volkswagen's Chattanooga assembly plant. According to The Tennessean, eight Volkswagen factory workers have filed complaints against the UAW with the National Labor Relations Board, claiming the union "misled or coerced" them into formally asking for union representation.
The UAW has instituted a major push at the Chattanooga plant to represent the 2,500 hourly laborers that build the VW Passat by using what's called a card-check process. The tactic is opposed by the National Right to Work Legal Defense foundation, the group representing the workers. The card-check process demands that a company recognize a union that obtains the signatures of more than half its workforce, according to The Tennessean. This tactic is in contrast to the more traditional route, which sees employees vote on union representation.
The workers filing the complaint claim that the UAW told them the cards merely called for a secret ballot, rather than an outright demand for union representation. Workers also allege that the UAW has made it overly difficult to reclaim their signed cards, some of which were signed so long ago that they have been rendered invalid. Although the cards can force a company's hand, federal law still allows the company to ask for a secret ballot before yielding to unionized workers.

Cars with the most reckless drivers are full of surprises

Insurify is a site for comparing auto insurance quotes. Because insurance shoppers need to submit information like the vehicles they're driving and the infractions they've compiled while driving those vehicles, Insurify has quite the database of correlations tying certain models to a habit of breaking certain laws. When the site's data analysts decided to compile a list of the top ten models for reckless driving citations in the decade from 2010 to 2019, the ranking contained a few wild entries. The Dodge Challenger making the countdown will surprise precisely zero people. But the Saturn L200? First, a definition: USLegal.com defines reckless driving as "driving with a willful or wanton disregard for safety. It is the operation of an automobile under such circumstances and in such a manner as to show a willful or reckless disregard of consequences." So this list is a caution about particular drivers more than the cars. For a baseline, according to Insurify data, for any random model, 15 out of 10,000 people who drive that model have picked up one citation for reckless driving. Back to that Challenger, then. No shocker for being here, but it's actually number 10, with 44 out of 10,000 Challenger drivers nabbed for a willful disregard of consequences on the road. That's better than the first surprise entry, the Saturn L200, a sedan only on sale for six years, with the least horsepower on the list, and out of production since 2005. The data set put drivers of GM's extraterrestrial sedan at 45 reckless pilots per 10,000 drivers. There are two pickups on the list, the only modern one being the Ram 1500 at eighth, with a rate of 46 in 10,000. Somehow, drivers of the third-best-selling pickup in the U.S. outrun the overwhelming numerical superiority of the best-selling vehicle in the States, the Ford F-150. The other pickup is the Chevrolet K1500 at number five, with a rate of 56 in 10,000. This is not only the oldest vehicle on the list, it went out of production in 2002, before any other vehicle on the list. Between the trucks, the Volkswagen CC slotted in at seven with 47 in 10,000 reckless driving chits, the Cadillac ATS slipped into sixth with 48 in 10,000.  The top four is a bag of unexpected. The Nissan 370Z is the first hardcore sports car on the list at number four, with 61 in 10,000 Z drivers flaunting their Fairladys in the face of Johnny Law.