The air bag: It’s time to get over the VW emissions scandal

Volkswagen surresptitiously got around the US's rather unreasonable emissions regulations. Courtesy Newspress

It's the motoring story of the decade. A headline that, instead of going away, has morphed into a bigger, more serious issue and has come to threaten even the existence of Bugatti. And it's high time everyone calmed down about it.

Yes, Volkswagen surreptitiously got around the US’s rather unreasonable emissions regulations with its diesel-engined models and did so for years, only being exposed because of its arrogance about the findings of some researchers. In many ways, I’m glad the motoring behemoth is getting its just desserts. But is it worth discussing at dinner parties? Not really, no.

I own a Volkswagen. It’s a Scirocco with a 2-litre, turbocharged petrol engine, which, in the four years that I have driven and abused it, has never let me down. If I found out that its manufacturer had somehow fudged the books regarding the emissions from its exhaust pipes, do you think I would care? No, I wouldn’t. I’ll be far too busy enjoying every other aspect of a car that happens to be the soundest investment I’ve ever made.

But if I was a US citizen, and if my Volkswagen had been fitted with a diesel engine, I know that at every dinner party I might attend these days there would be people piling on the pressure for me to “lawyer up”. This is the scourge of a modern, litigious society that serves to line nobody’s pockets except the law firms that hover around any industrial scandal. What an awful state of affairs.

Without wishing to be seen as an apologist fanboy, the truth of the matter is that Volkswagen made the ridiculous mistake of getting caught – unforgivable when you consider the unfolding chain of events.

In the weeks since this story broke, each company within the Volkswagen family has been under the microscope, including the aforementioned Bugatti, despite its rather obvious lack of diesel-engine usage. Because, you know, if a Jetta can be fudged, what about the claimed emissions of a Veyron?

In actual fact, we can all expect other companies to either soon be exposed, or for them to come out of the shadows waving a big white flag. The process has already begun, and the US manufacturers currently wringing their hands in glee and claiming the moral high ground will no doubt have their comeuppance, too.

The only car manufacturers who can claim to produce vehicles with zero emissions are those such as Tesla, who make all-electric cars. But even their green credentials are on ice thinner than that currently cracking under polar bears. Because the majority of their cars are powered by electricity generated by the burning of fossil fuels and, even if that wasn’t the case, the production of their physical structures and batteries, never mind their eventual disposal, all contribute to horribly polluting this planet we call home.

Even China has waded into the Volkswagen business, despite only 1,950 cars sold there being fitted with the software solution that has everyone talking.

I’ve been to Shanghai and it’s the only place on the planet that I have ever visited where you can look directly at the sun on a cloudless day without damaging your retinas – it’s that polluted.

Any new Volkswagen, no matter what its specification there, will be emitting exhaust fumes cleaner than the air it’s sucking in, but that will no doubt be lost on the lawyers eager to see Vee-Dub in the dock with its pockets turned inside out.