An old lesson in left wing smear jobs, the Audi 5000 "Sudden Acceleration" hoax.

Which featured engine tampering and leaving out simple facts.

Back in 1986 the Audi 5000 was a popular car. It had been released a couple years earlier and Audi’s U.S. sales were way up. Then there were some incidents of people’s feet slipping off the brake pedal and onto the gas pedal. Most of these drivers were women, and most of the drivers were shorter than average. Obviously women are shorter than men, so at first glance you can’t say whether it’s the often discussed difference in driving skills or if it’s just the height difference.

In any event for 60 Minutes to get ratings and show how they fought against big companies, they knew they had to blame the car instead of the drivers. They knew that in some police reports drivers had admitted that their foot had slipped off the brake pedal, and they knew that the Audi’s brake pedal was a bit smaller than most U.S. cars, and was also closer to the gas pedal, but driver error wasn’t going to be “newsworthy”. So 60 Minutes came up with “Audi Sudden Acceleration”.

A fairly complete shredding of the 60 Minutes lie is here. As noted below the picture of the Audi, the original shredding happened long before October of last year.

The story linked above (and in the picture from the page) includes how 60 Minutes rigged the Audi 5000 that they used in their show segment such that it would slip into gear on its own and start accelerating. Of course 60 Minutes did not tell their viewers about their little “tweak”, or how the Audi’s brakes would still keep the car stopped even at full throttle, and in fact would still stop the car from high speed while still at full throttle. The braking force is much more powerful than the engine in production vehicles, and that has been true for decades.

What the linked story doesn’t include, and of course 60 Minutes never mentioned (and which is very hard to find information on now) is that John Morzenti, who owned an Audi dealer in suburban Philadelphia, made a one million dollar challenge to 60 Minutes. He told them that they could do whatever they wanted to the engine, as long as he got to sit inside the car with his foot on the brake pedal. And of course again, 60 Minutes did not take John Morzenti up on that challenge.

Numerous other vehicles from various makes were later accused of “sudden acceleration”, and yet just like with the Audi 5000, the official investigations all ruled that it was driver error. Having had some incidents with stuck throttle and stiff floor mats in the past, when I had a “sudden acceleration” event while driving I did not panic. Interestingly enough this happened to me just a couple years after the 60 Minutes smear job. I was driving a turbocharged Isuzu I-Mark:

It was not powerful at all by muscle car standards, but it could go fast for what it was. I only drove it a few times, and when I did I liked to floor it whenever the occasion arose. One time I floored the gas, and it just kept right on accelerating after I let up on the pedal. I suspected a stuck throttle, so I did a few quick jabs on the pedal to free it. When that didn’t help, I put my foot on the brake.

It started slowing the car down immediately, and I pulled off onto a side street with no traffic. I came to a complete stop with the engine still wailing away. I looked down and the bottom tip of the gas pedal was stuck just underneath the very stiff floor mat. I pulled the mat back, and my “sudden acceleration” experience was over. So yes I can confirm, the brakes will stop your car even with a turbo engine. And of course more powerful cars have more powerful brakes. But if you’ve got your foot mashed down on the gas pedal because you’re panicked, the brakes aren’t going to be able to move your foot to the correct pedal.

The big picture takeaway is that you can go through one left wing claim after another, and find serious omissions and outright lies. Whether it’s Trump-Russia collusion, whether it’s Hunter Biden’ laptop, whether it’s the Corona “vaccines” are safe and effective, whether it’s the 2020 election was the safest and most secure in history, whether it’s cloth masks and/or leaky surgical masks can stop airborne viruses, whether it’s man made global warming was going to scorch us by 2016, etc., etc., etc. The left lies about anything and everything in order to advance their agenda and/or to scare people.

BTW, there’s a reason you now have to have your foot on the brake when starting a vehicle, and when shifting it out of park too. And it’s not because cars were accelerating when people had their feet on the brake pedal.