It's too soon to tell at this point, but to be honest, diesel sales have been steadily on the decline recently, as the the pricing gap on diesel/gas, and the pricing gap on the cars, means you have to drive 30-40k/yr to really have it make sense. Overall, I don't think this will have a big impact on sales.
To be perfectly honest, the number of people buying TDI's with altruistic motives in mind are slim to none. 99% of them just want the 1100 km's per tank. I can see this hurting the dealers in the granola belt (BC/Washington/Oregon/California) but in the prairies and out East, I don't want to sound flippant, but I actually think this will end up helping with some brand awareness, as a lot of people don't realize we even sell a car that gets such ridiculous mileage.
Either way, we are equally in the dark as to what actually happened. But we aren't worried about our doors being shuttered or anything. This is the bottom line IMO. Manufacturers have rebounded from known defects that were killing people, this is not that type of defect. VW will recall the applicable cars, do whatever they have to do with them, and move on. There really isn't much else they can do.
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