Bus sells for big bucks

This little '67 bus went for $80,000.

Behold: The New New Beetle

Spy Photos of Next Generation Volkswagen New Beetle

By Nick Kurczewski | Road & Track | Photos by CarPix

Spy photographers have captured images of the next generation New Beetle coupe undergoing road testing in Germany. A lower roofline and re-profiled tail offer hints that Volkswagen is planning to boost the retro appeal of the next Beetle, while also providing a welcome increase in usability and rear passenger comfort.

The New Beetle has always been about nostalgia. Unfortunately, our complaints about the current model sound like we could be writing about the original Beetle, which lasted in the U.S. market until 1980. A cramped rear seat, dated chassis, limited cargo room, and recent sub-par safety ratings have seen the competition go flashing past VW’s retro machine during its 13 year production run.

That’s right, the New Beetle has been on sale (and virtually unchanged) since 1998. If you love the rounded looks and have loads of happy Beetle memories, this comes as great news. But if you’re looking for an economy car that is fun to drive and has a premium feel to it, there are many better choices out there. The Mini Cooper, Scion tC and even the latest version of the VW Golf all make the New Beetle feel its age.

At a glance, these spy images don’t look dramatically different from the current new Beetle. Take a closer look and you’ll spot a longer and lower greenhouse that is less rounded than before. This should offer a much needed increase in rear headroom. The test mule also appears to have a longer tail-end, the rear screen is more vertical than before and there is a noticeable increase in rear overhang.

The new tail treatment should be far more practical, especially when it comes to cargo room. The 2010 New Beetle offers a miserly 12 cubic-feet of luggage space. A 2010 VW Golf is only fractionally better (12.4 cu-ft), but its wide-opening hatch and squarer shape of the cargo space is more convenient to use.

Engines will come from the Golf, which means a 170-bhp 2.5-liter 5-cylinder engine will be standard with a choice of 5-speed manual or 6-speed automatic transmission. At present, the New Beetle convertible is an automatic-only offering. We’ll see if that holds true when the newest New Beetle officially arrives early in 2011.

It will also be interesting to see if VW sticks to its recent ‘more for less’ pricing philosophy. The recently updated Jetta and next year’s New Midsize Sedan (most likely badged a Passat) are aggressively priced – in the case of the 2011 Jetta, the base model costs thousands less than the cheapest version of the outgoing model. The current New Beetle is priced at $19,440, a not insignificant sum for a car that puts a premium on form instead of function.

More at Road & Track

First Spy Shots of the New Beetle

More Spy Shots of New Cars Testing on the Road

More Ridiculous Than Your Car

How to Turn Heads on the Road:

Buy a Meter-Maid Car

Used Ones Are Cheap, Cute, Maneuverable;

The Most Fun You Can Have on a Trike

By CARI TUNA

From the Wall Street Journal NOVEMBER 11, 2010

SAN FRANCISCO—When Rahsaan Morin pulls up to the curb, people often run out of nearby stores at the very sight of him. They "start feeding the meter," says Mr. Morin.

It's easy to see why: He drives one of those three-wheeled vehicles commonly associated with the parking police.

He bought his first three-wheeler, a former San Francisco parking patroller, for $1,600 from a friend in Oakland. He found another on Craigslist for $2,000 and tricked it out with a stereo and roof rack for his surfboard. He uses it to make deliveries for the catering company he owns.

Paranoid parkers quickly sense peril. "They look at you, and they're not quite sure what to do," he says. "But they smile and laugh and breathe a big sigh of relief once they realize they are not getting a ticket."

The shock value is part of the allure of owning a meter-maid vehicle, as people call the tricycles. A fringe of motorists across the U.S. are ditching cars for retired three-wheeled utility vehicles. They troll websites and government auctions to find used models that they can get for between $500 and $7,000, depending on model, condition and upgrades.

Margie Bell, who works at a Crayola crayon plant outside Nazareth, Pa., uses her bright-yellow three-wheeler, which once belonged to the New York City Police Department, to pull Crayola-theme floats in holiday parades.

The idea started out as a joke. In 2007, she wanted a fuel-efficient car and said, "Heck, I'd even drive one of those meter-maid cars," says her husband, Roland Bell. That night, he found one on eBay that the two bought for $1,900.

Some people turn used meter-maid vehicles into hot-dog stands and ice-cream trucks, says Daniel Lanigan, a dealer of specialty concession equipment in Bridgeport, Conn., who sold a three-wheeler-turned-hot-dog-cart for $7,000 last month and has another for sale. "They make very cool vending vehicles," he says.

San Francisco, in particular, has an active meter-maid-motoring community. Yvette Huginnie, a high-school teacher who lives in San Francisco, drives a retired meter-maid trike originally from Florida, which she painted with multicolored polka dots and outfitted with a clown horn. "It's very much an expression of who I am," she says.

Alec Bennett, a San Franciscan who owns five used three-wheelers, has created a website, sillylittlecars.com, for fans of the trikes. The three-wheelers are "the greatest city cars," he says. They're cheaper than autos and are covered by inexpensive motorcycle insurance, says Mr. Bennett, a photo-booth builder by profession.

A driver in cities like San Francisco can park a three-wheeler at the curb like a motorcycle, making it a breeze to find a parking spot on crowded streets. "Like Smart cars but smarter," says Mr. Bennett, because Daimler AG's two-seater Smart ForTwo minicars, though shorter than meter-maid cars, have to parallel-park because they have four wheels. (Parking rules vary by city.)

Common meter-maid models include the Go-4 Interceptor from Westward Industries Ltd. and the Truckster from Cushman Inc. Though data on how many people own used meter-maid cars aren't available, three-wheeler owners say the vehicles have become more popular in recent years as the price of gas has risen.

The vehicles have a small but "cult-like following," says Famous Rhodes, director of parts and accessories at eBay Motors. From January to early October this year, 38 Trucksters and 6 Interceptors were sold on eBay, with the Trucksters fetching an average $1,243 and Interceptors going for an average $4,162. Sellers hailed from 24 states, from Arizona to Wisconsin, eBay says.

Cushman introduced a three-wheeled vehicle with an enclosed cabin—later known as the Truckster—in the early 1950s, according to Textron Inc., which now owns Cushman. Trucksters became popular among municipal police and parking-patrol departments in the 1960s, says Jim Frederick, a Cushman-scooter enthusiast who has compiled a history of the company.

Cushman stopped making the three-wheelers in the early 2000s. Since then, Go-4 Interceptors—costing about $20,000 new—have become the three-wheeler of choice for municipal patrollers.

Three-wheelers can get up to 50 miles per gallon, drivers say, but they have their limitations. Trucksters have top speeds of just 30 to 50 miles per hour. (Interceptors, which have more powerful engines, have top speeds of 40 to 70 mph.) Spare parts for Trucksters can be hard to find.

But the attention alone may be worth it. "It's a crowd pleaser," says Mr. Morin, the caterer, who owns seven three-wheelers, including a van and a dump-truck variation. "You have to be in a good mood when you're driving them, because people just ask so many questions."

Mr. Bennett has helped organize two "Cushman Crawls" in which owners paraded through San Francisco on a route that included the hairpin turns of the famously crooked Lombard Street. One three-wheeler rally in 2008 drew about a dozen drivers, some of them in fake police uniforms.

Playing on a vehicle's past life can also help find a parking place. "Everyone says to me, 'I'm just leaving! 'I'm just leaving!"' says Sam Frangiamore, a San Francisco software developer whose white Truckster used to belong to the Salinas, Calif., police department.

The downside of mistaken identity is vandalism. Mr. Bennett says his girlfriend's Interceptor was repeatedly sprayed with graffiti until the couple put a giant Barbie-doll head from a thrift store on the roof.

"Not a single problem ever since," says Mr. Bennett.

Write to Cari Tuna at cari.tuna@wsj.com

Pontiac Falls From Muscle Car Glory To Graveyard

By NICK BUNKLEY
Published: October 29, 2010
From the New York Times

DETROIT — Pontiac, the brand that invented the muscle car under its flamboyant engineer John Z. DeLorean, helped Burt Reynolds elude Sheriff Justice in “Smokey and the Bandit” and taught baby boomers to salivate over horsepower, but produced mostly forgettable cars for their children, will endure a lonely death on Sunday after about 40 million in sales.

It was 84 years old. The cause of death was in dispute. Fans said Pontiac’s wounds were self-inflicted, while General Motors blamed a terminal illness contracted during last year’s bankruptcy. Pontiac built its last car nearly a year ago, but the official end was set for Oct. 31, when G.M.’s agreements with Pontiac dealers expire.

“They were C.P.R.-ing a corpse for a long time,” said Larry Kummer, a retired graphic artist who has owned more than two dozen Pontiacs and runs the Web site PontiacRegistry.com.

The G.M. brand that was advertised for “driving excitement,” Pontiac brought Americans the Bonneville, GTO, Firebird and other venerable nameplates. Sportier than a Chevrolet but less uppity than an Oldsmobile or Buick, the best Pontiacs, recognizable by their split grille and red arrowhead emblem in the middle, were stylish yet affordable cars with big, macho engines.

Its biggest triumph was the GTO, developed by Mr. DeLorean, the brand’s rebellious chief engineer, in violation of a G.M. policy dictating the maximum size of a car’s engine. The GTO was a hit, and the age of the muscle car had begun.

“When the muscle-car era was in its heyday, Pontiac was king,” said Frederick Perrine, a dealer in Cranbury, N.J., whose family sold Pontiacs since the brand’s founding. “It put us through school. We were the house on the block that had the swimming pool growing up.”

Ed Dieffenbach, a retired police officer, recalls admiring Pontiacs in magazines as a boy but he never bought one. But with the brand nearing death, he drove more than 1,100 miles round trip last week from his home near Miami to the Lee Pontiac GMC dealership in Florida’s panhandle to trade in his Chevrolet Silverado truck for one of the last new Solstice two-seater coupes available anywhere in the country.

“I always wanted a hot rod, but never got around to it, so this is it,” Mr. Dieffenbach, 62, said after getting his new car home. “My wife sat in it last night and said, ‘Oh my Lord, wow.’ ”

For most of the 1960s, Pontiac ranked third in sales behind Chevy and Ford — a position now held by Toyota.

But in the decades since, Pontiac’s edge and high-powered image wore off. Repeated efforts in the 1990s and 2000s to revive the brand failed. Drivers too young to remember the GTO came to associate Pontiac with models like the DustBuster-shaped Trans Sport minivan or the Aztek, a bloated-looking crossover widely regarded as one of the ugliest vehicles of all time.

By early 2009, Pontiac had fallen to 12th place in the United States market, and its top-selling model was the G6, a sedan commonly found on car-rental lots.

Pontiac, named for the Michigan city where the company started and an 18th-century Ottawa Indian chief, found itself on the wrong end of G.M.’s government-aided bankruptcy restructuring.

“They had a lot of glory years, but from the ’70s on, Pontiac just couldn’t meet the bar,” Mr. Kummer said. “It was always living in the past.”

For the most part, Pontiac’s final months generated no more excitement than its last few decades did. G.M. said dealers had fewer than 125 new Pontiacs in stock at the end of August, mostly heavily discounted G6’s, but only eight of them were reported sold in September.

“You hate to see them go, but they were floundering and couldn’t find their place in the market,” said Tim Dye, who owns 21 Pontiacs from various eras and a huge collection of Pontiac memorabilia — started with a bottle of GTO cologne from his uncle — that he had assembled over more than 30 years.

Mr. Dye’s home in Oklahoma, along with two buildings on his property, are filled with thousands of items from Pontiac’s past, including showroom brochures, advertising posters, model cars, pencils, ashtrays and matchbooks. Now that Pontiac is gone, Mr. Dye plans to turn his collection into a museum in Pontiac, Ill., a city on Route 66.

“I can’t think of anything better to do than just visit with people about Pontiac every day,” he said.

The Pontiac Motor Division was born at G.M. in 1926 as a single model under the Oakland brand, but its roots date to the 1890s, when horse-drawn carriage-making was a big industry in Pontiac, 25 miles northwest of Detroit. The Pontiac Spring and Wagon Works started building automobiles in 1907, before merging with the nearby Oakland Motor Car Company, which was then bought by G.M. in 1909.

G.M.’s first Pontiac was an $825 model known as the “Chief of the Sixes” for its 6-cylinder engine. It sold so well that G.M. shut down Oakland to focus on Pontiacs.

Pontiac became known as a conservative brand, building stodgy cars for grandmothers, until its general manager in the late 1950s, Semon Knudsen, sought a hipper image and much younger buyer. Mr. Knudsen, the son of a former G.M. president and a fan of auto racing, unveiled Pontiac’s “wide-track” design, which improved the cars’ handling by pushing the wheels five inches farther apart.

Mr. Knudsen, known as Bunkie, said the change kept the wider-bodied 1959 Pontiacs from resembling “a football player wearing ballet slippers.” The style was distinctive, and Pontiac’s frequent wins on the racetrack in that era helped sales soar.

No innovation did as much for Pontiac’s high-performance image as the GTO, whose glory days were from 1964 to 1974. The original GTO’s 389 cubic-inch engine was larger than G.M. allowed in a car of that size, but Pontiac executives got around that rule by offering it as an upgrade package to an existing model, the Tempest, and no one at the corporate level was aware of the option before it went into production and dealers began clamoring for more.

“We got 5,000 of them out into the marketplace before we got around to telling the corporation what we were doing,” said Jim Wangers, a Pontiac ad executive who worked with Mr. DeLorean to create the GTO, short for Gran Turismo Omologato.

Mr. Wangers, who was born the same year as Pontiac and never thought he would outlive it, recalls the time that the German luxury carmaker BMW sent a team of engineers, designers and marketers to meet with Mr. DeLorean’s team and study how the brand did so well.

But Pontiac sales peaked in 1973, when 920,000 were sold, and the ride was mostly downhilll after that. Pontiac fans lament that the brand finally got a few worthy models in its final years — the G8 full-size sedan and the Solstice sports car — but by then it was too far gone.

Gary Lee Jr., an owner of the dealership that sold Mr. Dieffenbach his Solstice this week, remembers the sadness of losing Oldsmobile when G.M. killed that brand in 2004. But with Pontiac, he has just been eager to move on. Signs for Pontiac at his dealership had long been removed, and he said, thankfully, he had no more new Pontiacs to unload.

“It was a great line,” Mr. Lee said, “while it lasted.”

Bugatti Super Sport looks pretty fast

The New Bugatti: Waiting for Superman No More
By Dan Neil
The Wall Street Journal (article, videos and slide show of pictures check it out)

Jerez de la Frontera, Spain

I've encountered some pretty courageous people in my time. I once shook John Glenn's hand. I've seen Pierce Brosnan sing in public. But the bravest guy I've met lately is Pierre-Henri Raphanel, the pilote officiel for the Molsheim, France-based car maker Bugatti. It was Mr. Raphanel who, in July, strapped himself into the new Veyron 16.4 Super Sport and circuited Volkswagen's Ehra-Lessien test track at an astonishing 268 mph, setting a new Guinness land-speed record for a production car.

"Eet was weally stress-phol," said the 49-year-old French former race champion, whose accent sounds like it came out of a perfume bottle. "I was a leetle bit scared." Quelle surprise. The biggest threat was that the huge Michelin tires might literally disintegrate due to the friction.

The slightest imperfection of machining in the gearbox's componentry, fashioned months before, might have been lying in wait, ready to explode like Apollo 13's oxygen tanks. Any sort of computer hiccup in the fuel-delivery system—pumping 10 liters per minute into the quad-turbo, 8-liter, 16-cylinder, 1,200-horsepower reactor behind the seats—could have upset the car's aero balance, sending it careering across the track like an arrow that's lost its fletching.

Crosswinds, birds, brakes and, yes, even driver error—all could have ended the interesting life of Pierre-Henri Raphanel. This was automotive marketing as death sport.

But Mr. Raphanel's greater feat of fortitude now lies ahead. It's his job to take customers on demonstration drives in the Super Sport, an extreme-performance version of the Bugatti Veyron, and sit in the passenger seat while mere civilians like myself drive this exquisite, barbaric, incomparable automobile at speeds faster than a Formula 1 car. The Super Sport can accelerate from highway speeds to more than 200 mph in the time it takes you to read this sentence out loud. Literally.

And then, just when other hypercars—Lambos, Ferraris, Paganis and even rarer isotopes—run out of steam, the Super Sport accelerates harder. This experience quickly exhausts one's supply of Old Norse oaths and curses and one is reduced to childish wows and holy cows. At full throttle in the Super Sport, the world comes at you in one ferocious, howling, soul-shaking, Newtonian sneeze.

And Mr. Raphanel must sit there, politely, impassively, encouragingly. Ladies and gentlemen, that takes balles.

A little back story: Bugatti, the legendary marque of European race and road cars run by Ettore and Jean Bugatti, père et fils, effectively ended the day in 1939 when Jean crashed the Le Mans-winning T 57C "Tank" on a country road outside Molsheim. According to company lore, the accident occurred when Jean tried to avoid a drunken letter-carrier on a bicycle, which gives you some idea of the esteem in which France holds the civil service.

In the late 1990s, VW's imperious leader, Ferdinand Piech, set about to recreate Bugatti, more or less out of thin air. The company restored Bugatti's lovely château and orangerie in Molsheim (in Alsace) and tore down and rebuilt the stables and garages, historically accurate down to the last brick and board.
The business plan, if you can call it that, was to construct 300 cars called the Bugatti Veyron 16.4. The 1,001-hp Veyron (around $1.6 million) was to be the fastest production car on Earth, with a top speed of 253 mph. When I drove the car in Sicily in 2005 I figured, well, that was that. The economics of beating such a record were decidedly not in any company's financial interest. It's estimated VW Group has invested about a half-billion euros in Bugatti.

But then an outfit in Washington state named Shelby Supercars—no relation to the famous race driver—managed to convince the Guinness records folks that its raw-as-tartare, twin-turbo, 1,200-plus-hp Ultimate Aero SSC was a production car meant for real consumers, and in October 2007, with a run of 257 mph, it pilfered the world record from Bugatti.

The disdain coming from Molsheim was as acrid as clutch smoke.

At the Super Sport introduction this week in Spain, company historian Julius Kruta denied that the Super Sport was built with the intention of taking back the land-speed record. The Ultimate Aero SSC "was not even on our radar." Right.

The Super Sport, said Mr. Kruta, was built in response to customers who, incredibly enough, asked for a sportier version of the Veyron—because, obviously, the Veyron was such a sissy cupcake of a car. The company plans to build 30 to 40 Super Sports and sell them for $2.5 million to $3 million. Operators are standing by.

The list of modifications to the Veyron is long and expensive. The car now has four fuel pumps, compared with the Veyron's two, feeding the larger quad turbochargers. A less restrictive (and louder) exhaust system was developed. That and some engine-management programming increases torque to a hilarious 1,500 Newton-meters (1,103 pound-feet), and peak torque is higher in the rev band.

Suspension-wise, the ride height was raised slightly (to accommodate greater high-speed downforce); and the air suspension, half-shafts, links and wheels were lightened, reinforced and laced tighter. The biggest changes were aerodynamic. The Veyron's lovely, roof-mounted air scoops are replaced with so-called NACA ducts. The main grille is larger, and the entire front of the car is more ventilated to provide cooling for brakes and the front Haldex differential. A wild double diffuser has been arranged in the rear.
The aesthetic result? The hackneyed comparison would be to say the Super Sport looks like some kind of space ship, but if extraterrestrials exist, I seriously doubt they are this cool.

At the same time, the Super Sport was obliged to retain all the drivability and refined splendor of the original Veyron, except faster. "This wasn't easy," said chief engineer Wolfgang Schreiber, and I bet it wasn't. Driven at normal, human-scaled speeds, the car is positively docile. The Super Sport's ligaments are little more concussive, yes, and the engine noise more pronounced. But the seven-speed dual-clutch transmission, the real heart of this car, slips between ratios as silkenly as a Lexus.

Still, I'm not sure what this car is. It's not a sports car, exactly, because despite the heroic use of carbon fiber everywhere, it weighs 4,043 pounds (110 pounds less than the Veyron). Also, it's all-wheel-drive, which means it's just about impossible to get it to rotate on the throttle, even with stability control turned off. Thanks to its enormous hydraulic rear wing, it summons up to 880 pounds of downforce, pressing the car down on its gigantic Michelin tires (14 inches wide on the rear). All of that makes the car majestically stable and locked down, with phenomenal amounts of cornering grip (1.4 g's). But it also means the car is about as flickable and tossable as an aircraft carrier.

The Super Sport is many things, but fun to drive is not among them, unless you are amused by shafts of mortality sifting through the clouds.

It's not a track car, either, because its weight and ferocious acceleration will inevitably overwhelm the brakes. Yes, the Super Sport did smash the BBC's "Top Gear" Dunsfold Aerodrome lap record, because it had to make only one lap (1:16:8 seconds, 2.2 seconds faster than a Ferrari Enzo). Even these audacious brakes (15.3-inch front rotors with eight-piston calipers) simply can't shed enough heat, corner to corner, lap to lap, to make the car effectively fast on the track.

The Super Sport isn't a grand touring car, either, since you can't get a thong and two sticks of gum in the cargo compartment under the hood. Also, because of some dispute with the supplier, the Veyron's navigation system is no more. Bugatti wants its customers to mount their TomToms on the dash, like it's a Hertz rental car.

So what is this car? Well, for one thing, it's a motivational tool, a performance piece, a tour de force from a company—VW Group—which means to overtake Toyota as the world's largest car maker.
But for me what it is is simply the fastest car I will ever drive. No more waiting. Superman is here.

PlopGear

PlopGear: Dung Powered Beetle Goes Like Stink

By ALEX WEST

Published: 06 Aug 2010 • The Sun UK

THIS new British car blows the opposition away - it's powered by human POO.

The Bio-Bug has been converted by UK engineers to run on methane gas.

Excrement flushed down the loos of just 70 homes is enough to drive it 10,000 miles - a year's average motoring.

And with a top speed of 114mph, its makers claim it can go like s*** off a shovel.

The two-litre VW Beetle convertible is said to be the first gas-powered car that does not suffer reduced performance.

Mohammed Saddiq of Bristol-based sustainable energy firm GENeco, which developed the prototype, says it will pave the way for a green motoring revolution.

He boasts that it drives like a conventional car and will "blow away" electric models.

Mohammed said: "We thought it would be appropriate that the poo-powered car should be the classic VW Beetle Bug because bugs naturally break down waste at sewage works to start the treatment process which goes on to produce the energy.

"At the moment we use waste flushed down toilets but it won't be long before energy will also be generated through treating food waste. It is probably the most sustainable car around."

The vehicle is started using unleaded petrol but switches to methane once the engine is "up to temperature".

If the methane tanks in the boot run out, the Bio-Bug reverts back to petrol.

About 18million cubic metres of biogas are produced from human waste every year at Wessex Water's sewage works in Avonmouth, Bristol.

Read more: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/Green/3083959/PlopGear-Dung-powered-Beetle-goes-like-stink.html#ixzz11oQGRBiO

VW/Audi Engine Sludge Lawsuit

VW and Audi Settle Class Action Suit Over Engine Sludge

From the New York Times
By CHRISTOPHER JENSEN
September 29, 2010, 5:59 PM

The Volkswagen Group of America has tentatively settled a class-action suit claiming that the engines of nearly a half million VWs and Audis were prone to damage from sludge, and that the automaker did not provide enough help to owners.
Under the agreement, Volkswagen would pay at least 50 percent of the cost of fixing the engines, according to documents filed in United States District Court in Boston. Judge Joseph L. Tauro is scheduled to consider whether to give final approval to the settlement in March.
The vehicles involved are the 1997–2004 Audi A4 (sedan, wagon and convertible variants) and the 1998–2004 VW Passat with the 1.8-liter 4-cylinder engine. Combined, almost 480,000 vehicles are covered. Some owners complained they had to pay $4,000 to $8,000 for repairs.
Sludge is a thickening of the oil created as moisture and contaminants build up and break down the oil, causing it to gel and reducing the oil flow and lubrication. The problem, according to the suit, is that the VWs and Audis have “an undersized 3.7 quart oil supply, which provides an inadequate quantity of oil to dissipate the heat” generated by the turbocharged engines. The suit also claims VW committed fraud by telling owners it was their fault for not changing the oil often enough.
In agreeing to settle the case, Volkswagen Group of America, which sells VWs and Audis, denied any wrongdoing.
In 2004, Volkswagen and Audi addressed the sludge problem by extending the warranty to eight years and unlimited mileage, and by promising to help consumers who could prove they changed the oil according to the manufacturer’s recommendations. But some consumers complained to theCenter for Auto Safety that VW and Audi rejected their claims if they missed only one oil change or were a few miles late. That left them facing expensive repairs.
In a 2005 interview with The Plain Dealer of Cleveland, Len Hunt, who was then vice president of VW, said he thought the requirements for consumers to get reimbursed were too strict. “I think we were a little Teutonic in our rules,” he said.
“When you’ve got a reputation for not such stellar quality, you’ve to treat the customer properly. Sometimes your rules and regulations and the culture of the company can be a little bit harsh when it gets translated down to the customer level,” he said. “We’ve got to have some latitude in there.”
VW then eased the restrictions on sludge claims.
According to court documents, the new settlement appears to make it even easier for consumers to be reimbursed. These are the two major provisions of the tentative settlement:
• The automaker will compensate owners for 100 percent of the repair costs if they can prove “that the last two required oil changes prior to the sludge-related problem or engine failure were performed within the recommended time and mileage intervals, with a permissible variance of 20 percent of the time and mileage intervals.”
• The automaker will compensate owners for 50 percent of the repair cost “where the settlement class member cannot submit proof that the last two required oil changes prior to the sludge-related problem or engine failure were performed within the recommended time and mileage.”
It is not yet clear how much the plaintiffs’ lawyers will be paid. They are to submit a bill later this fall for consideration by the judge. The lawyers for the plaintiffs were not available or declined to discuss details of the case. A spokeswoman for VW said the company had no comment.