With the news today that the Volkswagen Group has made a spectacular blunder the Elves were duly sent out to find a MOC that we could relate to the story. Unfortunately the Elves are idiots, so this 1970 Porsche 908/02 ‘Flunder’ is as close as they got. Still, it’s only one letter away and to be fair to them here at TLCB Towers they do hear a lot of words beginning with ‘F’…

Anyway, back to Volkswagen. Today’s news that the company have rigged the NOX emissions of their diesel vehicles in order to bypass air quality laws is one heck of a blunder. Actually, it’s not even a blunder. It’s a thoroughly despicable, bordering on evil, business decision to put profit ahead of peoples’ well-being. The NOX levels emitted by the affected Volkswagen Group vehicles are up to 40 times the legal limit, directly damaging the lung tissue of those that breathe it, and causing a variety of respiratory diseases and even biological mutations. Yup, we’re going to stick with ‘evil’.*

So far Porsche, a subsidiary of the Volkswagen Group, are unaffected by the scandal – although only because they don’t yet use the group’s 4-cylinder diesel engines.

The glorious 1970 Porsche 908/02 ‘Flunder’ pictured above comes from a time when emissions could legally be quietly ignored, being powered by a three-litre flat-8 engine making just under 400bhp (and it still emitted less NOX than a modern VW diesel). The 908 raced alongside the bigger 917, being favoured on twisty tracks where the 917 was too cumbersome, and the example above raced at Le Mans in 1970 in the hands of Rudi Lins and Helmut Marko.

Previous bloggee Greg 998 is the builder and you can see more of his beautiful 908 on both MOCpages and Flickr.

*TLCB – somewhat unbelievably – predicted this back in March(!). We’re still awaiting a call requesting our services from the investigators at the Environmental Protection Agency. We’re sure it’ll be any day now…