Overview

"Amidst the lush green hills of rural Pennsylvania, engineer Rowan Klein felt right at home test driving Volkswagen's newest luxury SUV contender prepping for its North American launch. The Touareg's refined diesel purred satisfyingly below as they swooped along the rolling landscape. Mind lost admiring lush summer scenery, Rowan almost missed the test equipment's worrying sensor alerts popping up from the passenger seat alarming him. The scenic route returned sky-high exhaust readings suggesting emissions violating clean air standards nearly forty-fold over federal limits despite brochure promises. Heart sinking as a beloved brand's halo wavered, Rowan wondered how Volkswagen PR wizards spun such wildly divergent pollution realities from the nobler ""clean diesel"" fiction advertised? Little did he know the creeping discrepancies reflected a swelling corporate fraud soon detonating reputation carnage of historical proportions... This true-life drama captures the dramatic fall of Volkswagen, corporate sustainability icon turned scandalous poster child over its secret emissions deceptions. The German automaker's blind ambition and hubris fostered high stakes ethical compromises from the inception of its lean diesel engines. Attempting an impossible balancing act meeting tough new nitrogen oxide restrictions, exhausted engineers developed defeat devices to cheat tests while claiming breakout efficiency. Despite smoking gun warnings, bean-counting executives pushed ever harder deputizing more staff towards complicity rationalizing ""the ends justify the means"" but eroding Volkswagen's soul. Until the ugly truth surfaced no longer containable, igniting consumer ire and unprecedented global penalties threatening the company's collapse! This gripping narrative reconstructs the key decisions, intense boardroom pressures and callous disregard bringing a venerated industrial giant to its knees when storytelling replaced honest engineering. It serves as a potent corporate morality tale on dissolved ethics over slippery slopes nurturing scandal. Exploring essential questions around securing sustainability through principled innovation versus compromised incremental ""progress"" benefitting the few over the many, the drama offers harsh lessons about prioritizing advancement at any societal cost. Shining light where darkness still lingers over accountability and culture change years later, the book contextualizes Volkswagen's profound reputational jeopardy challenges reforming integrity lost steamrolling growth precipitously. Is reconciliation possible after broken trust breathes life into the proverb ""What gain a man to lose his soul""?"

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