^ Why would most potential car buyers look there rather than believe what Audi, Ford etc were telling them (prior to disclaimers)? We are talking about the average consumer here, what is reasonable to assume for the majority that don't know to look at the finer points of law or government legislation. The NEDC may have delivered, but the car companies didn't deliver what was expected by the average consumer.
You could never count on getting exactly the same as combined figures as no two drivers are the same, but if Mr diehard Focus TDCI knew he'd average 45mpg with official figures of 50mpg combined as it had pretty much always been, then Ford bring out the new stop-start version, boasting 70mpg (and no disclaimers), they'd reasonably consider that they'd probably get 63mpg or thereabouts, and they'd be very wrong on that assumption that Ford allowed them to make.
Pretty much all the mainstream car manufacturers boasted of 20% more fuel economy based engineering advances from no more than 2 years ago. VW/Audi listed lower friction coatings on the internals of the engine, stop-start, brake energy recuperation, weight savings etc. With all those advances, some (many) may have thought that it was plausible that 20% gains could have been gotten from that little list rather than taking advantage of the static time within the established test cycle to give a hugely misleading result far more detached from reality than the old tests (or even the current test, prior to stop-start addition for most cars). Some weight savings (that would give plausible mpg gains) were grossly oversold, such as advertising that the MK7 Golf (as a whole) had lost 100Kg, citing newer body panels (which only contributed to 23Kg loss), rather than mentioning that the lower spec models lost their multilink rear suspension (74Kg lost) and that mid/high models had only lost 25Kg. Misrepresentation/over-egging the pudding, call it what you like.
Prior to the recent disclaimers, car manufacturers went out of their way to mislead the consumer on mpg expectations. They didn't so much move the goal posts so much as they used a smaller faster ball with the same goal posts, when they added stop-start knowing full well how much it would skew the already established simulated driving test cycle and how little it would affect everyday driving.They sold cars on this hugely improved mpg. Just because all the car manufacturers were doing it, it doesn't make Audi or whoever else less wrong. Prior to the disclaimers there was a deliberate misleading of customers as to mpg expectations.
