I repeat; the USSR was very good at metallurgy. They just didn’t “waste” it on civilian products. Rocket motors, now, or tanks, or helicopter gunships…
Wrong way round. Plain old mild steel isn’t bad for the environment; the rust it produces is quite benign, the metal is easily recyclable straight into the furnace. Modern cast irons contain things like manganese and other additives, not so good. Aluminium alloys contain copper, and some of the recent ones contain scandium.
This is why it’s OK to use mild steel hulls and magnesium anodes on canals, whereas galvanised hulls are a no-no. Iron and magnesium oxide are everywhere in the environment, zinc not so much.
So an old dead Fiat reduces emissions if it’s replaced by a modern equivalent, and is largely and easily recyclable, whereas the emissions benefit of replacing a product of VAG is on average not that great, and it will cost more to recycle.
The VAG scandal is bad because the honesty of German engineering has been called very much into question, but in terms of overall real world emissions it’s pretty negligible.
