The media love a dose of Schadenfreude, especially when the schadenfreudees are German, and with the sentencing this month of two of the men behind the highly entertaining VW sex scandal the Schadenfreude really hit the fan in the broadsheets and motoring news media.
But something amid the tawdry tales of Brazilian escort girls, Hamburg hookers and Viagra parties gave me hope for the future of VW. Call me deviant but mightn't a good old sex scandal be exactly what a company (that has, in recent years, given us such pathologically unsexy cars as the Touran and Fox) needs?
These days being caught with your trousers down can do wonders for one's profile - just ask Paris Hilton. I wondered if the sex chicanery at VW that came to light in 2005 might by now have filtered down to the production lines so I borrowed its new compact SUV, the Tiguan, to find out.
It's due in South Africa around the middle of 2008.
First impressions confirmed my suspicions. The Tiguan, cheeky younger brother to the Touareg, has the legs-apart stance of a Düsseldorf dominatrix and the bulging curves of a busty Berlin brothel babe. Inside, the first thing that catches your eye is the groovy seat fabric, ribbed for your pleasure and made from sponge-clean, faintly rubbery material.
Never before did VW's blue-glow instruments get my heart pumping but with that torrid story swirling round my impressionable young head, in the cockpit of the Tiguan they evoked nothing less than the neon signs outside the seedier sex clubs of Hamburg's back streets.
Then a neighbour came out of her house and threw a bucket of cold water over me and I saw the Tiguan for what it really is: a pricey, pumped-up Golf, with the same all-wheel-drive system (albeit in permanent action in the Tiguan), a very similar interior and, in the case of the one I borrowed, an efficient, if noisy, two-litre turbodiesel engine - 189g/km won't upset the Mayor of London and 180km/h and 0-100km/h in 10.7sec seems fairly benign, too.
This doesn't sound very promising but I liked it. In fact, if I wanted a compact SUV, I would choose a Tiguan over a RAV4, CR-V or Freelander. The quality is superb, a real return to form for VW after some iffy interiors of late; it drives impeccably, masks its high centre of gravity well and, of course, it now comes with added sex appeal.
If you ask me, the rest of the motor industry could learn a great deal from VW. I'm not talking about quality control or brand-consistent design strategies: someone should pass VW's little black book to the management of Toyota right away. - The Independent, London