Volkswagen Dieselgate and the top five biggest automotive scandals ever

Despite its best efforts, Volkswagen shows no signs of getting easily out of the quagmire that it currently is in. The German carmaker currently has more than 450 people sifting through evidence of its diesel emissions scandal. Over 1,500 smartphones, laptops and USB drives have been seized so far, netting the investigators a whooping 102 terabytes of data. And now, for the first time, Volkswagen has delivered a trove of information that offers insight into its investigation, the first time the company has gone public with the findings of its internal probe.

But, despite its unprecedented scale and fallout, is Dieselgate the biggest scandal the automotive world has ever seen? Probably not. Over the course of its century-odd history, the automotive industry has seen its share of controversies and scams that have threatened to derail its progress. Here are the biggest four of them:

1)      1986 – Audi 5000’s unintended acceleration

Roughly 30 years ago, the respected American news programme 60 Minutes ran an investigative report exposing the Audi 5000’s predilection for ‘unintended acceleration’. Vulnerable people were being mown down or driven into garage doors by suddenly uncontrollable Audis, the report suggested.

Two years later the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) fully exonerated Audi, deciding that the problem stemmed from the car’s smaller, more European brake pedal sitting closer to the accelerator pedal than you’d usually find in a US car. In other words, it was down to user error.

The furore almost destroyed Audi in the US market, whose sales collapsed from 75,000 in 1985 to 12,000 in 1991.

2)      1977 - Ford Pinto fuel tank recall

In 1977, Mother Jones Magazine published an expose on the Ford Pinto claiming that for seven years, Ford sold cars "in which it knew hundreds of people would needlessly burn to death."

According to the report, Ford engineers discovered in pre-production crash tests that rear-end collisions would easily rupture the car's fuel system and cause a fire. Instead of fixing the issue, the automaker decided to go ahead with production anyway instead.

Mother Jones also uncovered a memo written five years before on the Pinto's fire-related fatalities that laid out the cost-benefit scenario of the scenario. The note estimates that each Pinto-related death comes at a cost of $200,000, putting the benefits of fixing the problem at $49.5 million and the cost at $137 million.

Ultimately, Ford had to pay out millions in lawsuits and became the first U.S. corporation to be prosecuted for criminal homicide. What made matters worse were newspaper reports that Ford was aware of the problem and had decided to settle lawsuits for deaths and injuries rather than recall vehicles and fix the problem. However, the car company was found not guilty of reckless homicide in the 1980 court case.

3)      2000 - The Ford/Firestone tyre debacle

Even in the US, SUVs weren’t such a big deal as recently as the early 1990s. But the Explorer became a colossal cash-generating hit for Ford during the decade, the archetypal suburban school run answer-to-every-question-you’d-asked-and-plenty-you-hadn’t.

Then Explorers started falling over, a result of their Firestone tyres suffering blow-outs caused by tread separation and incorrect pressures, but a situation seemingly exacerbated by the Explorer’s higher centre of gravity, suspension set-up and track width.  The car’s predecessor, the Bronco II, had been deemed unstable in a Consumer Reports’ test and ultimately cost Ford a fortune in damage settlements.

Both Ford and Firestone issued enormous recalls, shouted at each other a lot, and a 95-year-long partnership between these two US titans dissolved during a series of acrimonious congressional hearings.

4)      2014 - Honda and Takata airbags recall

Last year, the respected New York Times published a report claiming that Takata and one of the car makers with its air bags installed, Honda, had taken their time in alerting the public of dangerous defects. The report linked two deaths and more than 30 injuries to ruptured air bags in Honda vehicles, including incidents dating back at least a decade.

As a result, at the start of this year, the NHTSA handed down a $70 million fine to Honda in civil penalties for failing to report deaths, injuries and warranty claims. In February, the agency announced it would fine Takata $14,000 per day for failing to cooperate fully with its investigation. "Safety is a shared responsibility and Takata's failure to fully cooperate with our investigation is unacceptable and will not be tolerated. For each day that Takata fails fully to cooperate with our demands, we will hit them with another fine," said U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx in a statement.