Steve Parker Motoring / The Car Nut: WE WERE WRONG AND WE FIX IT --- THANKS TO YOU!

We posted here last week about "Consumer Reports" magazine and their recent story, which scared the hell out of millions of parents worldwide, stating that just about every child care car seat on the market provided little, if any, protection for children. Just a few days later, CR received criticism from all corners, not only for their test results but also for their tainted methodology. CR, in what seemed to be one of the fastest turn-arounds in journalistic history, pulled their results, posted apologies (and explanations) and, well, basically said: "Our bad". In our post, we wrote about CR's problems in the past with their false and even patently malicious and staged attack on the Suzuki Samurai (a vehicle we would never buy, but that's another story). We also brought up the infamous 1986 CBS "60 Minutes" report by correspondent Ed Bradley on "unintended acceleration" and "poor pedal placement" on the Audi 5000. In that post we said the Audi sued CBS. We were wrong.

We received an e-mail from a long-time automotive industry marketing and training expert, who happened to be working for Audi at the time of the CBS debacle --- What a small world, huh? He said Audi never sued CBS. We followed-up on his e-mail and indeed he was right, we were wrong --- Audi never sued CBS (though the company did sue various other parties in connection with this event and won each and every suit filed).

Here, following, for everyone's info, is a story from an article which appeared on AOL a decade or so ago, which, according to several sources, is a good recollection of the CBS slash-job on Audi. In reality, CBS comes out looking even WORSE than it did in our original posting! Here it is ... Bold-facing is ours ...

"Audi sales were crushed by a 1986 '60 Minutes' show that was off track. A decade later, the car maker is finally recovering, but 60 still won’t admit it was wrong.

Buried deep in the 60 minutes archives, squirreled away alongside the
program’s notable triumphs, is an episode the CBS weekly newsmagazine isn’t eager for you to see.

This isn’t some obscure early segment with poor production values that would make the venerable show look laughable today. It’s one of 60 Minutes’s greatest hits, a piece originally broadcast on November 23, 1986, titled "Out of Control."

As presented by veteran correspondent Ed Bradley, the 17-minute segment showed compelling visual evidence that the Audi 5000, a German luxury sedan, had a dangerous propensity to lurch forward on its own, even when the driver’s foot was on the brake.

This defect, dubbed "sudden acceleration," was allegedly responsible for hundreds of accidents. The piece also included dramatic interviews with six people who claimed that accidents they suffered
in their Audis were caused by the car. Two of the wrecks caused fatalities.

But it turns out that all of the people featured who sued Audi eventually lost their cases. And the woman used in the "teaser" opening—the clips that run just before the ticking clock at the start of each 60 Minutes show—was later fined for filing a frivolous suit.

"It’s not because we’re embarrassed by the story," says 60 Minutes spokesman Kevin Tedesco, explaining his refusal to provide a tape of the show. "It’s the lawyers. They don’t want to open up a can of worms."

The Audi episode was repeated on September 13, 1987. The rebroadcast included additional information on the skein of mishaps—1,200 reported accidents, including five deaths and 400 injuries—claimed to have been caused by the defective Audis. As Bradley stated, "the sheer number of incidents involving the Audi 5000 alone would make it the most frequently occurring serious defect in automotive history."

The show had an enormous impact in the marketplace. Sales of all Audi models in the U.S., which had peaked at 74,061 in 1985, plunged sharply after the 60 Minutes broadcasts.

"It was a nightmare for the company," says Thomas McDonald, former head of public relations at Audi’s parent, Volkswagen of America, Inc. "We lost billions of dollars in sales and revenues." Audi’s average annual sales of 14,000 cars from 1991 to 1995 were just 19 percent of its pre–60 Minutes peak.

But in early 1989, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) issued the findings of an exhaustive two-year study of sudden acceleration. It concluded there was no mechanical problem that directly caused the acceleration of the Audi 5000 or any other cars (including Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, and Toyota models) accused by drivers of having minds of their own.

NHTSA investigators determined that most of the accidents must have been the result of driver error—especially a driver mistaking the gas pedal for the brake. Government safety agencies in Canada and Japan reached similar conclusions in their own studies.

On March 12, 1989, Bradley presented a short update, reporting on NHTSA’s findings. He said the study "supported the position of Audi and the other manufacturers," and that investigators "could find no mechanical or electrical failures which would cause sudden unintended acceleration." While the study concluded drivers were mistakenly hitting the accelerator, Bradley noted that it also pointed to possible design problems—"the shape, location, and feel of gas and brake pedals"—as a contributing factor.

"Audi of America," concluded Bradley, "which saw its sales drop by more than two-thirds as a result of adverse publicity, said it was delighted with the new report, which it said finally vindicates the Audi."

That was it for the update. What Bradley did not say was that the original 60 Minutes broadcast might have been erroneous or misleading. He termed the NHTSA findings an "opinion." 60 Minutes’s own role in creating "adverse publicity" was left unacknowledged. "They never apologized," says a former Volkswagen executive. "They never said, ‘We were wrong.’" (Bradley declined to answer questions about his piece.)

What’s more, Bradley also failed to mention how 60 Minutes had been able to offer footage of an Audi 5000 lurching forward from a parked position. William Rosenbluth, an automotive consultant retained by plaintiffs in a suit against Audi, says he drilled a hole in an Audi transmission and piped fluid into it. The resulting filmed sequence, in which the accelerator pedal moved down on its own, provided 60 Minutes with the damning visual evidence the program needed to brand the Audi 5000 a dangerous vehicle."