Come on Copa, you are safe driving around an ALH equipped car. We who own and maintain our CR+CP4.X equipped cars drive around with the certainty that the car won't last unscathed as much as an old ALH equipped car.
I can't even plan for a 1,000 mile trip, without having to work out a highly detailed HPFP FAILURE contingency plan. That is not what $30,000 should buy.
You're misunderstanding my meaning.
I'm not saying that the failure rate of the new cars is acceptable, and I'm not saying that VW's inaction is acceptable either.
What I'm saying is that they have, in fact,
failed to act.
There is no warranty extension that we would all like. And there is no silent recall.
All I'm saying is that discussing which of those two non-existent things we would prefer to have more is a purely academic exercise.
The way I see it the NHTSA's involvement in this is strictly limited to it's affect on
highway safety. They are not going to exert any regulatory pressure on VW to look after the consumers
financial well being. That's not the NHTSA's role. They could care less whether consumers got ripped off.
NHTSA got in on this thing due to the potential that it could pose a traffic safety risk. But there haven't been many glaring examples of that (and thank god really).
So VW put them off the scent with the BS about misfueling, and VW tossed a bone out there with the misfueling guards (which I see as nothing but a stall tactic), and meanwhile maybe the newer generation pumps are better but they're not SAYING they're better because they want the good pumps included in the one large statistical pool with the bad ones.
So here we sit with the NHTSA not having a lot of compelling evidence of a highway safety risk. So they're not exerting pressure on that basis and And we don't have any other big guns lining up on our side to exert that sort of pressure either.
To me that means VW will continue on their merry way without ever taking meaningful action on any of this.
That is of course unless 5 nuns are driving in an 09 JSW on their way to be VIP guests at the State of the Union address when their HPFP fails as they're entering DC on the 14th Street Bridge... the ensuing mayhem causes a multi-car accident which kills a busload of senators kids
AND both Giant Pandas from the Washington DC Zoo.
I don't think anyone wants to see that.
I'm not saying anyone should stop trying, and I'm not saying stop the discussion. I'm just saying I have very little confidence that it will get anywhere.
But I do have Hope
(™)