Yes, it’s time for a flashback Friday! Remember all those great Volkswagen ads of years gone by? Simple. Witty. Dare I say…trustworthy. Best of all, they poked humor at themselves. They totally got how folks were like “wtf??” when they saw a car that resembled something you’d step on in a heartbeat. And they ran with it. Yesiree…totally ran—straight to the bank. And flower children everywhere made the VW Bug the automotive emblem of their age. Complete love-fest.
But that was then. Fast-forward to September 18, 2015 when news broke about something called a “defeat device“. It sounded like something you’d grab in Minecraft to kill the Ender Dragon—but alas, it turned out to be much more sinister. As we all now know, it’s what VW installed in its diesel autos to suppress emissions so that the cars would pass emissions testing on a dynamometer—aka a stationary “rolling road” used to test cars (and no, we didn’t know what that was either until a week ago). Those emissions, however, when on an actual road, were spewing upwards of 40x more toxic fumes than permitted. Uh-oh! Where’s the love now folks? To die-hard VW fans, it’s a jilt they’ll never get over.
And now there’s a stack of Volkswagen lawsuits piling up.
But it’s worth looking back…at some of those VW ads of yore, and imagining those same ads circa 2015. Yes, the ads on the right are totally fake–just to be clear. But it’s easy to see how they could well be art imitating life right now… so here goes…