Far be it for me to defend any auto maker but after nearly sixty years in the auto industry I feel I can speak with some knowledge of what goes on in the business of maintaining & the repair of many different company's cars. One Japanese company I worked for had massive brake failures at low temperature( -20/-22c) This vehicle was never recalled. The customer was mailed a voucher for two new wiper blades free, when he/she came into pick up the wiper blades we knew that that car had a defective brake Master cylinder & we asked the customer to wait for half an hour while we fixed a small problem, NEVER mentioning the brakes. Same company when they had to meet new emission standards their cars just would never run right when new from the factory. However the company in question sent us new jets & they fixed the problem. Of course the cars no longer met the emission standards, that is just the tip of the iceberg of what went on. In defence of the companies emissions were handed down by politicians most times with very short lead times who had no idea what it took to get cars to meet those standards. A case in point was MGBs, up to the middle of 1974 the engines produced 95HP @ the flywheel. At the end of 1974 that HP was reduced to 64 HP( North America,it was still O/K for the U/K to emit as before) at the flywheel to meet the American regulations. Can you imagine trying to sell a customer that wanted to trade in his earlier model built before the the end of 1974 owning a post 1974 model. I can understand manufactures' trying to get around the standards short term until the engineers & scientists could catch up but I can't understand a company with a reputation like VW doing what they did. Years ago Ford with their Pintos & Bobcats had a fault that when hit from the rear the cars caught fire & because of the impact you could not open the doors & people burned to death. Top brass made a decision that accident claims would cost less than a recall (about $6.30 per car to fix) They estimated claims would not exceed more than $120 million dollars total, the first single claim was for $128 million. Then we had all the tire failures here in North America that killed dozens of people.No companies should be allowed to do their own monitoring, it has been proven time after time. Mick B.