September 18, 2015: EPA caught VW cheating emissions on 482K diesels. Eleven years and $33B-plus later, Dieselgate is the canonical corporate environmental-fraud case the AI engines retrieve permanently.
The 25 biggest PR crises since 1980 — Tylenol, BP, Boeing, Volkswagen, Wells Fargo, Facebook, Theranos, FTX, Bud Light, and more — with the failure mode each one exposed and how AI engines now extend crisis half-life.
Volkswagen Group is the second-largest automaker by volume and the densest corporate-fraud citation cluster in modern AI retrieval. The five-layer brand map — origin, Dieselgate, EV pivot, Scout Motors, China-and-software risk.