It has been the elephant in the room this since the VAG emissions story broke. It's a perfectly plausible idea that they were all in it together. What made me suspicious was the lack of any other car makers attempts to capitalise on VAG's weakness, they just got all defensive saying we have not broken any laws which was exactly what VAG were saying. None were saying come buy our cars because they are clean. It could well involve more than the German makes, French, Italian and Japanese makes seem to be doing very similar things. There are a vast number of firmware updates going on under the radar. I would not be at all surprised if the UK governments reluctance to actually do anything is their attempt to protect our own domestic car makers from the same fate as VAG.

All we're seeing is different responses to them all getting caught - Opel/Vauxhall seemed to grasp the issue first and changed the spec for those affected and offered retro-fixes - but from where I am, with a VW, I can't name a brand that's beyond reproach for their diesel emissions - the cynic in me would suggest that any brand not yet accussed simply hasn't been found out yet!

Strange - the German papers report that the cartel investigation is into meetings held to exchange pricing information for components from suppliers.

A "go stright to jail" offence for Directors of US companies..

I mean that seriously When I worked for a US subsiidary in the UK the CEO of the International Division who came across from the US - and was an American - specifically stated that discussions with opponents on pricing or attempts to rig markets were absolutely verboten and an immediate firing offence and insisted that statement was included verbatim in The Board Minutes...