House Republicans ready Volkswagen bailout vote

[TheWarrior]

Funny thing just happened:

This month is my last car payment and Yesterday I'm pretty sure the turbo just took a dump.

The car isn't even worth getting fixed (I've yet to see the quote) due to the emissions cheat.

It's the last VW I'll ever own. Time to move back to the Japanese makes.

Did you notice any sounds prior to the failure?

 

[ParadigmDawg]

Funny thing just happened:

This month is my last car payment and Yesterday I'm pretty sure the turbo just took a dump.

The car isn't even worth getting fixed (I've yet to see the quote) due to the emissions cheat.

It's the last VW I'll ever own. Time to move back to the Japanese makes.

VW has the car's computer wired to your bank account. The second they see the last payment is made they hit the destroy button....

According to my next door neighbor(the Audi/VW shop foreman) excluding first model year cars, they have very little issues.

I would never own a car that is this expensive to maintain after the warranty period is expired.

 

[jinjuku]

Did you notice any sounds prior to the failure?

There was zero forewarning.

 

[jinjuku]

At the forum, TDIClub.com, I found a local tuner shop that does nothing but turbo upgrades and DPF deletes.

$400 for a pulled turbo from an upgrade and $500 for labor, $75 for the gasket kit.

The dealer wanted $3000 ($1600 for the turbo). The car currently has an artificially depressed trade in value (good condition) of $4000. The dealer wasn't willing to work on the price. And that's alright since I don't intend to be a customer again.

 

[herbu]

Ford seemed to be the first domestic maker to pull their head out of their arse.

And they didn't take any govt bailout money.
I'm still PO'd at GM. Taxpayers lost $10B in the sellback of their stock. So in effect, we simply gave GM $10 Billion. And the media loves them, with award after award. (Remember Car of the Year for the Volt? Kinda like the Nobel Peace Prize for B HO.) I submit that ANY company given $10B should accomplish extraordinary things.

Maybe we should give all TDI owners $10B to split.

 

[Chu Gai]

Maybe letting them declare bankruptcy was a viable option?

 

[KEW]

And they didn't take any govt bailout money.
I'm still PO'd at GM. Taxpayers lost $10B in the sellback of their stock. So in effect, we simply gave GM $10 Billion. And the media loves them, with award after award. (Remember Car of the Year for the Volt? Kinda like the Nobel Peace Prize for B HO.) I submit that ANY company given $10B should accomplish extraordinary things.

Maybe we should give all TDI owners $10B to split.

Well, you need to be more PO'd...the tally now seems to be $11.2B.

But why PO'd at GM? Isn't it a little unreasonable to expect a business not to take "cheap" government money?

Why not be PO'd at the Bush administration for initiating it and the Obama administration for following through without addressing the lack of accountability?

For the record, Ford pleaded for the bailout as follows. (Ford CEO's testimony to Congress):

Despite the serious global economic downturn, Ford does not anticipate a liquidity crisis in 2009 – barring a bankruptcy by one of our domestic competitors or a more severe economic downturn that would further cripple automotive sales and create additional cash challenges.
In particular, the collapse of one or both of our domestic competitors would threaten Ford because we have 80 percent overlap in supplier networks and nearly 25 percent of Ford's top dealers also own GM and Chrysler franchises.

http://archives.financialservices.house.gov/hearing110/ford-_final_written_testimony.pdf

I think it was pretty much a "no win scenario". Don't know if the bailout was the best solution, but I don't know what would have been better.

 

[agarwalro]

And Germans drive FAST. If a German motorist has a Porsche capable of 200 mph, he WILL drive it at 200 mph! And all the VW Polos (smaller than VW Golfs and not available in North America) sucking wind at 125 mph are legally required to yield right!

+1 on all this.

I drove the Autobhan in 2009. I was in a MB A series (minivan) doing 100-120mph while Audi's and Posche's were blowing by fast enough to unsettled me from wind buffeting. It was glorious to hear them coming and scary because I knew my car was about to lurch randomly.

My instructions were, the left signal flashing when the car was in there left most lane meant, get the f out of the left most lane, because I'm on a speed run. Easier said than done when the approaching car went from distant speck in rear view to "I'm about to plow your behind" in 2 seconds flat.

 

[jinjuku]

I think it was pretty much a "no win scenario". Don't know if the bailout was the best solution, but I don't know what would have been better.

Insuring we (tax payers) didn't take a bath... That would have been better and it could have been accomplished.

 

[Rickster71]

And they didn't take any govt bailout money.
I'm still PO'd at GM. Taxpayers lost $10B in the sellback of their stock. So in effect, we simply gave GM $10 Billion. And the media loves them, with award after award. (Remember Car of the Year for the Volt? Kinda like the Nobel Peace Prize for B HO.) I submit that ANY company given $10B should accomplish extraordinary things.

Maybe we should give all TDI owners $10B to split.

The shell game/brib that was played there; give them $10B and they'd keep their union labor.
Otherwise GM wanted to claim bankruptcy and start over, union free.

 

[bonejob]

Yep, expensive to own. The first maintenance is free at 5,000 miles and then it is every 10,000 miles. You can purchase AudiCare for around $900 and that covers the car for 5 years of maintenance which is a good discount. You have up to 15,000 miles to still be able to purchase AudiCare so I normally wait until that service period is due and purchase it while I am there.

They do other maintenance along with the oil change but $500 is still crazy.

It is not an "oil change." It is a full maintenance interval, consisting of over 20 procedures, including an oil change.

In days of old, when cars were like ships, rolling on tiny 14" wheels shod with whitewalls, oil changes were done three to four times more often, chassis' had to be lubed, engines had to be tuned, plugs, ignition points and distributor caps had to be replaced, brakes even had to be adjusted - all far more often than once every 10,000 miles.

In inflation-adjusted terms, cars of the 1960's were more expensive to maintain than modern cars. In inflation-adjusted terms, even the gas is cheaper today than back then, and most cars today use much less of it to boot!

So, welcome to the 21st Century! Different makes of cars at the same price points do not differ by all that much in normal maintenance costs. Having owned contemporary Fords, VW's and Toyotas, if anything the most expensive of them for maintenance is the Toyota, but not by enough to be upset about.

Speaking as someone who has been owning and maintaining cars for nearly 50 years, $500 - in 2016 dollars - every 10,000 miles, is not excessive at all.

That being said, maintenance is one thing, durability and reliability are other matters entirely. From my experience, European cars are less reliable than Asian cars.

BUT... Asian (and American) cars tend to become rust buckets a lot earlier than they should - at least in my home state of Wisconsin, the Heart of the Rust Belt, the Road Salt Capital of the World.

So, on balance, I would rather have a car that needs repairs (as opposed to regular maintenance) a little more often than a car that starts biodegrading out from under me from leprosy before I've made the last payment.

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[bonejob]

German cars are no longer made in Germany...

Only partially correct:

Jettas - Mexico and USA
Tiguan - Austria
Tuareg - Czech Republic
Beetle - GERMANY
Passat - GERMANY and USA
Golf - GERMANY

Of course, that is just final assembly. Parts and sub-assemblies come to their final assembly points from all over the world.

German, American, Japanese and Korean cars are made everywhere, including the USA. Starting this year, we'll be getting Buicks from CHINA!

So don't single out German cars. Auto manufacturing has become a global affair, regardless of the nationality of the nameplate. National differences mostly show up in design and engineering, not so much in final assembly.

It's a hypothetical that hasn't been broached by gov't agencies, VW, or the lawyer they've contracted with to arrive at a general solution. Not everyone will accept VW's from final offer and I've read they're prepared for personal lawsuits and some class action. I'm just amazed a company can absorb 100's millions and billions in losses and just keep ticking.

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[bonejob]

VW cheated though and deceived regulators and consumers. No one likes a cheat. As to the other point, that's why God made all different kinds of titties.

Yes, you are right. No one likes a cheat. Yet, most people cheat - in ways however minor. And show me ONE person who claims he has NEVER cheated, and I'll show you a liar.

That is where my charges of hypocrisy come from. People just aren't that ethically consistent. They reserve their righteous indignation for OTHER people who are caught cheating. But when confronted with their own cheating behavior, can nearly always find a way to justify it.

On the Grand Scale of Corporate Misconduct, VW's is relatively minor IMO. Compared to the ordinary business practices of the food industry, oil companies, the insurance industry, HMO's, the financial sector and pharmaceutical industry, as well as our governments at every level, this deception by VW just doesn't make me all that angry. From where I sit, these others do plenty enough every single day to seriously piss me off; I just don't have any left for VW over this.

Yes, VW shouldn't have done what they did and they should make it right. But there is SO much worse crap going on out there...

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[herbu]

ordinary business practices of the food industry, oil companies, the insurance industry, HMO's, the financial sector and pharmaceutical industry...

There is a difference between bending, twisting, finagling and questionably interpreting the law to operate just inside the limit, and designing a product to specifically operate one way for the tests, and another way during normal operation.

The former spend billions to squeeze every legal advantage possible. The latter cheats.

 

[Chu Gai]

Here's an example, http://pics.tdiclub.com/data/500/2015_Jetta.pdf, of VW's service schedule and what you get for your $500 or whatever it is that you pay.

And yes, we probably all cheat in one way or another but justifying what VW did by pointing to someone who didn't pay for a bagel at work or who boned an intern while married doesn't excuse the former.

 

[jinjuku]

You might also consider the Ford Fusion (as a rough equivalent to Jetta).
I don't think the gap between Jap and US is so great as it used to be, and Ford seemed to be the first domestic maker to pull their head out of their arse.
Be sure to consider incentives and rebates - you can usually find from $1000 to $2000 before negotiations.

I'll will never purchase an American make. They lost me with a POS Escort and Cavaliers. Neither car saw past 120K miles.

GM/Ford can keep their vehicles and the QC issues, their 2nd string engineers.

 

[KEW]

Insuring we (tax payers) didn't take a bath... That would have been better and it could have been accomplished.

Yeah, I don't know (as in I believe it is impossible to really be able to know what might have happened without the bailouts). Would our economic system and Wall Street have collapsed, would our capacity to manufacture cars have collapsed? I don't know!

The US was so arrogant when they discounted Deming's ideas on improving production/QC systems, causing him to find a receptive audience in Japan manufacturers:

Deming is best known for his work in Japan after WWII, particularly his work with the leaders of Japanese industry. That work began in August 1950 at the Hakone Convention Center in Tokyo when Deming delivered a seminal speech on what he called Statistical Product Quality Administration. Many in Japan credit Deming as the inspiration for what has become known as the Japanese post-war economic miracle of 1950 to 1960, when Japan rose from the ashes of war to start Japan on the road to becoming the second largest economy in the world through processes founded on the ideas Deming taught:[4]

1. Better design of products to improve service
2. Higher level of uniform product quality
3. Improvement of product testing in the workplace and in research centers
4. Greater sales through side [global] markets

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming

In many ways, the automotive industry brought it on themselves.

OTOH, using NAFTA, the government kind of pulled the "profit rug" out from under these companies which had committed to pension obligations made in a non-NAFTA world. (I'm not saying NAFTA is all bad, but in this situation, it did a lot of damage).

However, if you look at the automotive supply chain and how many jobs and earned pensions are effected if automaking in the US died a (comparatively) sudden death, I am not willing to say it is not worth saving. I don't want to live in a community of desperation.

I believe the most important role of the government is to provide stability so society/industry can be forward-thinking and make long term plans. The bailout was F'd up, but I don't know how well we can really point a single finger in one direction. If you look at history, there were many factors which caused the US auto industry to be in trouble, the economic crisis just presented a clear and sudden event to make it impossible to ignore.

 

[bonejob]

There is a difference between bending, twisting, finagling and questionably interpreting the law to operate just inside the limit, and designing a product to specifically operate one way for the tests, and another way during normal operation.

The former spend billions to squeeze every legal advantage possible. The latter cheats.

The aforementioned business interest groups may or may not barely stay within the letter of weak, toothless laws (often written with strong input from business lobbyists), but daily they callously make decisions that ruin livelihoods, wipe out life savings and actually kill people. All in the name of free enterprise and the pursuit of maximum profit.

Companies like British Petroleum, Exxon Mobil, Kaiser Permanente, Halliburton, Astra Zeneca, Humana, Goldman Sachs, Citibank, Safeco and others wreak far more havoc and just pure evil than VW does on its worst day. Devil hang the letter of the law.

Someone famous whose name currently escapes me once said, "The law is an ass." The law often has criminalized the innocuous while permitting that which would earn anyone a one-way express elevator to the Ninth Circle of Hell.

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[bonejob]

Here's an example, http://pics.tdiclub.com/data/500/2015_Jetta.pdf, of VW's service schedule and what you get for your $500 or whatever it is that you pay.

And yes, we probably all cheat in one way or another but justifying what VW did by pointing to someone who didn't pay for a bagel at work or who boned an intern while married doesn't excuse the former.

I never said that VW should be "excused." I just think the level of outrage is out of proportion. People routinely shrug off far worse behavior by individuals, corporations and our own allegedly democratic government. That troubles me.

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[Chu Gai]

Well then, in the woords of Hillary, you should run for public office. Not everything is proportional and that's just the way it goes. Now about those cable bills...