Jack Ewing

“In the years preceding the West Virginia University study, Volkswagen had also considered detailed proposals, made on several occasions at product strategy meetings, for improving the pollution control equipment so that emissions under normal driving conditions would better match those achieved in the lab. The proposals were rejected.8 Too expensive, Winterkorn and others said. The use of defeat devices, which may have begun as a stopgap, had become a habit and, as long as the deception remained undiscovered, a cost advantage. Now, in 2014, Volkswagen gambled against the odds that it could continue to avoid the consequences.”
― Jack Ewing, Faster, Higher, Farther: The Inside Story of the Volkswagen Scandal

“When Piëch returned to Wolfsburg in September 2015 for a meeting of the shareholder’s committee, arriving in a red Bentley driven by Ursula, his mere appearance sparked speculation that he was plotting a comeback.7 So formidable was Piëch’s reputation as a corporate power player that no one would believe that he was really gone until he lay in his grave, and perhaps then only if he had a stake through his heart.”
― Jack Ewing, Faster, Higher, Farther: The Inside Story of the Volkswagen Scandal