5 Ways To Sell Your Dirty VW After Dieselgate

Selling Volkswagens became one of the most difficult jobs in the world last week after news broke that the company’s 2009-onwards 2.0 litre TDI-powered cars came with software designed to trick emissions tests. The car could detect when it was being tested, allowing it to remap the ECU to pass the test, then revert back once on the road to defaults that spew more harmful emissions than Donald Trump in a bad mood.

Professional car salesmen aren’t the only ones feeling the pain. Tens of thousands of Volkswagen owners are trying to sell their personal rides right now, too. Doing so in the wake of a scandal so abominable it has its own hashtag - #Dieselgate - requires new strategies in Craigslist classified craft. Here are five examples of the emerging advert art.

1. Distance your car from the scandal

“This car was built before those affected by the VW diesel emissions scandal.”

That sentence - short, polite, to the point - should mitigate any concerns vexing those in the market for a used diesel hatchback. But in the modern era of quick news and instant gratification, subtlety won’t get you very far. Unless you’re committed to responding with your dignity intact, you might need a different tactic to rise above the countless others desperately offloading their filth-spewing VWs…

See the advert here.

2. Get your point across by SHOUTING

“NOT EFFECTED BY RECALL STILL GETS GREAT MILEAGE AND IS FUEL EFFICIENT”

Now you’re cooking with gas! Er … diesel. BOLD = SHOUTING, remember? With the 24/7 news behemoth leaning heavy on Volkswagen as the monster of the moment, shouting “NOT EFFECTED (sic) BY RECALL” from the proverbial rooftop is integral to a successful sale. Unfortunately, our friend buried their all-too important exclamation at the end of their ad, in the proverbial basement. The TL;DR crowd won’t see it at all.

See advert here.

3. Get your point across nice and early

“THIS CAR IS NOT AFFECTED BY THE VW EMISSIONS SCANDAL AND HAS NEVER HAD ANY RECALL APPLIED TO IT. THIS CAR HAS NEVER HAD A SINGLE PROBLEM. JUST THOUGHT I WOULD POST THIS INFO. SO YOU ARE AWARE THIS VEHICLE IS NOT AFFECTED IN ANY WAY.”

That got their attention right from the start, well done! If you weren’t selling a bog standard, diesel Jetta that’s redder than the cheeks of the humiliated VW Group board you might just have a chance at that $10,000 asking price. Good luck!

By the way, did we mention this car doesn’t have any problems? Oh, we did? Okay, just checking. No problems. At all. Ever. Honest.

See advert here.

4. Act like there's nothing wrong

“This car has no issues whatsoever …”

Sure, if you don’t consider belching up to 40 times more NOx from your tailpipe than EPA regulations allow an issue. As expected, 99.99 per cent of the Craigslist ads out there for Dieselgsate cars take this approach. This begs a question that’s plagued the minds of terrible girlfriends and boyfriends for millennia: is lying by omission a thing?

See advert here.

5. Own up to it with a sense of humour

“For sale is this 500,000-of-a-kind, beautiful silver 4 door, low-mileage, well-kept, toxin-spewing, equivalent-to-a-****ing-atom-bomb-for-the-environment …”

This advert was removed from Craigslist almost immediately, just like the proud few that tread in its footsteps. Admittedly the whole ‘funny classified ad’ thing stopped being actually funny the second the first one went viral and copycats emerged, but to be fair to this guy there really is an art to fitting this many profanities into a paragraph that still makes sense.

Despite their inevitable removal, adverts like these shall live on as screenshots etched on to the hard drives of select petrolheads with too much time on their hands. Yes, that means us. NSFW language within!