Milestones: Safer at every speed

When your car dealer gives you a lemon …

Defective cars used to be so commonplace they had a nickname: lemons.

A case in point: In 1980, Dan Brochu, a resident of New London, Connecticut, paid $6,500 for an Oldsmobile Omega. It was a classic new car lemon:

Water pooled inside, the electrical system failed, the paint peeled and the manual transmission slipped. The car was in the dealer’s shop for repairs 135 days over an 18-month period. 

To fix the problem, ConnPIRG’s Ed Mierzwinski lobbied for a bill, sponsored by Rep. John Woodcock, to create a legal definition of a new car lemon and require automakers to replace defective cars or offer consumers refunds.

Ed reached out to consumers who had filed complaints about their cars, bringing together many of them — including Dan Brochu — for an April 13 media event calling for “Lemon-Aid.” Another lemon owner flew his Cessna over the state capitol, with a banner that read “My ‘82 Chevy is one reason Conn. needs a lemon law.”

The event spurred an outpouring of citizen letters to legislators that led to the June 4, 1982 passage of the nation’s first Lemon Law. Since then, the program (along with Lemon Law II, which in 1984 established a state-regulated arbitration program) has returned $60 million in refunds and car replacements to consumers.

Over the next decade, the Connecticut Lemon Law would be replicated in every state, many of them thanks to PIRG research and action.

Diesel-gate exposed, put to good use

When Volkswagen began marketing a fleet of “clean diesel” cars, it sounded too good to be true.

Diesel cars were known for their fuel efficiency, not their low emissions. Daring consumers to “learn the truth about clean diesel,” VW sold over half a million of the vehicles.

Unfortunately for VW, consumers eventually learned the truth.

A well-respected but low-profile group, led by Drew Kodjak, an alumnus of NJPIRG, was the first to discover in the U.S. that VW’s diesels weren’t clean at all. In fact, their emissions significantly exceeded federal standards.

Through what became known as a “defeat device,” VW had engineered the cars to fool emission tests — and to increase their toxic exhaust levels once they hit the road.

In response, PIRG launched the Make VW Pay campaign, organizing customers, dealerships and other advocates to call for the company to grant full rebates.

Among these customers were Marcus Moench and Elisabeth Caspari, who drove their Jetta SportWagen TDI in early 2016 from their Colorado home to VW’s Virginia headquarters to drop off a petition signed by 20,000 PIRG supporters.

In 2017, a federal judge ordered VW to pay a $2.8 billion criminal fine, with the funds targeted for environmental mitigation and spread across all 50 states as well as the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.

PIRG’s focus turned from making VW pay to putting VW’s fine to good use. Our advocates called on states to put the money into charging stations for electric vehicles, electrifying public transit, and electrifying school buses.

To inform the public and hold the states accountable, on May 23, 2019, PIRG released a Volkswagen Settlement State Scorecard, giving only 15 states a C or better.

About this series: PIRG and The Public Interest Network have achieved much more than we can cover on this page. You can find more milestones of our work on consumer protection below. You can also explore an interactive timeline featuring more of our network’s consumer protection milestones.