I bought a TDI, and was burned by the faking the emissions scandal. Fuck that company.

Yeah, even back when I liked VW, I understood the car itself might be priced in my range, but the parts cost similar to BMW parts, where there's certainly some enthusiast gouging going on.

And then the emissions scandal came out when shit like that was getting more important to me.

A friend of a friend was offered a general counsel position at VW. They told him something like "the hours are good unless there's a crisis". Their timing was bad though because while he was still thinking it over, news broke of another layer to their emissions scandal which would have kept him much busier than expected. And they knew that was coming but couldn't say, "we need more lawyers to deal with this coming crisis" but had to instead act as if it's just a normal hire with normal hours. Has much changed from how they were run in the 1930s?

More expensive and less reliable.

I wonder how their management expected increase in sales. Maybe they trusted Joe’s chart.

Not disagreeing, but you are describing almost every company or corporation above a certain size