From the Wiki site on "60 Minutes" Audi "unintended acceleration" fiasco:
"Unintended acceleration
On November 23, 1986, 60 Minutes aired a segment greenlit by Don Hewitt, concerning the Audi 5000 automobile, a popular German luxury car. The story covered a supposed problem of "unintended acceleration" when the brake pedal was pushed, with emotional interviews with six people who sued Audi (unsuccessfully) after they crashed their cars, including one woman who had killed her six year old boy. Footage was shown of a Audi 5000 with the accelerator moving down on its own, accelerating the car, after an expert witness employed by one of the plaintiffs modified it with a concealed device to cause it to do so.[19] Independent investigators concluded that this was most likely due to driver incompetence, where the driver let their foot slip off the brake and onto the accelerator. Tests by Audi and independent journalists showed that even with the throttle wide open, the car would simply stall if the brakes were actually being used.[20] Some claims were made that this was in part due to a slightly closer placing of the pedals than in many American cars, which allows smoother driving for greater fuel efficiency and more control in an emergency situation.
The incident devastated Audi sales in the United States, which did not reach the same level for another fifteen years. The initial incidents which prompted the report were found by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and Transport Canada to have been attributable to operator error, where car owners had depressed the accelerator pedal instead of the brake pedal. CBS issued a partial retraction, without acknowledging the test results of involved government agencies.[21]
A rival to 60 Minutes, Dateline NBC, would be found guilty of similar tactics years later regarding fuel tank integrity on General Motors pickup trucks."
