It’s a bit like the Tour de France. Volkswagen, the German carmaker (for those of you who are in your infancy or were never born), has both been accused of and freely admitted to a mammoth program of doping…sorry, emissions tests circumvention that’s put it in front of a potential $18bn fine courtesy of the US Environmental Protection Agency.

It was an elaborate operation. VW (that’s short for Volkswagen, the car company) snuck in some clever software that can tell whether or not the car is being tested for emissions rather than having someone actually driving it. The system looks at data to do with steering wheel position, speed variation and other tell-tale titillations that could give clues as to how the car is being operated, and then runs the engine in one of two modes: 1. ‘Dyno calibration’ (short for ‘Ssssssshhh mode’) or 2. ‘Road calibration’ (short for ‘Jeremy Clarkson mode’) depending on whether or not the algorithm says ‘being tested’ or ‘driving.’

I reckon that must’ve taken some developing. As much development as an engine that realises the ‘zip’ that Volkswagen is so proud of while keeping emissions nice and low? I guess not, or they would’ve just done that… and thinking about it, the reason it didn’t take as much development is that VW forgot to factor in one quite important situation: emissions whilst driving. Verdammt, or as Prince Albert would have exclaimed: Damn!

Of course, we don’t much like seeing big companies, role models engaging in this kind of foul play, and I might have applauded VW’s Clarkson-inspired ingenuity in trying to fool the fun police were it not for the fact that Volkswagen now looks pretty stupid. When questioned about the differences between lab tests and road tests, the company poured out a big bucket of technical drivel that, since it was probably written by Clarkson, failed to convince US authorities who decided not to allow any 2016 cars to be sold on the sub-continent until VW offered a decent explanation. That turned out to be something along the lines of

“Yes, well, what we did was, we fitted the cars with a ‘defeat device’ that can tell whether or not you’re testing its emissions. So when you are it goes into Sssssh mode, but when you’ve gone away it goes into Clarkson mode and pumps out 40x acceptable levels, but it goes faster. [Anyway, we don’t believe in climate change]”

Thanks. That’ll be $18bn please.

If you’re going to do something, Volkswagen, do it properly!

Augustin Eden (all views expressed above are my own)