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This morning there’s more fallout from the Volkswagen diesel emissions scandal, as VW has now admitted 11 million vehicles globally may have the defeat software installed that lets the company cheat on its emissions tests. At least in the US, there are approximately 500,000 TDI-branded cars on the roads that are routinely spewing out up to 40 times the legal amount of NOx, which leads to increased air pollution in the form of smog, respiratory problems in humans, and the destruction of the ozone layer. In the meantime, VW has issued a stop-sale order on all new and used TDIs, and the Justice Department has opened a criminal probe.

Perhaps the worst part of this story is that VW has long exhibited this kind of deceptive behavior.

I’ll get to that in a moment. First, there’s various talk around the Web as to what’s going to happen next: How will VW fix the existing cars? Will it degrade their performance or just cost VW tons of money? Will VW give up and offer to buy back the cars entirely? Will the company just offer everyone $100 off on their next VW and generate even more anger and bad will? There will certainly be class-action lawsuits on top of the legal trouble the company is already in. All of this raises questions of who exactly is going to want to buy these cars when all is said and done, and what it’s going to do to the overall image of diesel in America once more.

In short, there’s no easy way out of this mess — not just for Volkswagen, but for the 500,000 customers in this country who purchased a new-generation (2009 or newer) TDI vehicle on the grounds of its torquey low-end performance, stellar highway fuel economy, and long range between fill ups. For example, if you bought the car because of its fuel economy, and resultant lower CO2 emissions that contribute to the greenhouse gases that cause global warming, you won’t be thrilled to find out you’ve been polluting the atmosphere in an entirely different manner all this time. If you bought the car because of its performance characteristics, whatever VW does next to fix the problem in the recall could lower that performance and/or curtail its fuel economy numbers.

Here’s the thing, though: Back when VW first announced its “clean diesel” initiative, I covered it a lot for PCMag and its sister blogs (Gearlog, TechnoRide, and GoodCleanTech, the latter three of which are shut down now). There were two things that stood out for me at the time in 2008. The first was the fact that “clean diesel” was really just a fancy way of saying “a diesel car that meets the emissions requirements of all 50 states, just like any garden variety gas car.” In other words, there wasn’t anything particularly clean about it the way a Prius or Chevy Volt is. It’s just that the new VW models finally cleared the US’s more stringent emissions specifications that originally forced the auto manufacturer out of the diesel market for a few years in the mid 2000s.

So once again, VW could sell diesel cars in 50 states. Big whoop — although certainly good for the small-but-fervent group of diesel car enthusiasts. And better fuel economy does equate to lower CO2 emissions, at least.

The other thing was more egregious: the fact that VW actually lied in its MPG claims in its initial advertising for the new-for-2009 models by skipping ahead of the EPA and hiring its own third-party vendor, AMCI, to come up with BS results of 38 MPG city and 44 MPG highway (link via the Wayback Machine). A little googling at the time revealed that VW basically hired a brand marketing firm to “run tests” that generated more favorable results than the EPA would, and the cars actually landed around 29 to 30 MPG city and 39 to 42 MPG highway depending on model and driveline configuration.

VW eventually gave up on that transparent ploy in its advertising and cited the still-good EPA numbers, although now we’re learning that the company cheated big time on emissions in order to get the engines to perform well. And yet, even knowing what I knew above, I still bought a TDI a few years ago myself, because that’s the thing about being a car enthusiast: It’s not always the most rational thing to fix up a ’78 Alfa Romeo Spider or shell out $600 divots to your mechanic every two months to keep an ’83 Porsche 944 on the road, but you do it anyway because you love the cars.

BMW, Mercedes, and others have found ways to deliver on diesel’s promise while staying ahead of emissions requirements. I’ve been in and driven several diesels from the other German manufacturers and can report they’re great performers. So the technology isn’t necessary hopeless for passenger cars. Hopefully we won’t find out BMW and Mercedes cheated too, though given the much higher price of those cars, it’s doubtful they needed to.

Regardless, the story here for VW — and owners of TDIs like me — is far from over. Granted, there will always be diesel trucks on the road until someone develops a more advanced way to transport untold tons of cargo across the country, and trucks have looser emissions restrictions anyway. And the tinkerers who chip or otherwise modify their car’s engine performance never cared about NOx emissions in the first place. But a story this horrendous, and this damaging to the image of “clean diesel” as an alternative, environmentally safe fuel for the 21st century, already has far-reaching implications and could very well lead to the death of diesel in passenger cars in the US once again.

Here we thought the days of sooty, clattering early 80s diesel cars were long gone. Turns out all you need to do is cheat on your emissions tests.