Mitsubishi Motors Corp. said it manipulated mileage test data for its minicars sold in Japan, resulting in 620,000 vehicles produced in the past three years getting labeled more fuel efficient than they actually are. This according to a story on Bloomberg. The interesting news here is Nissan outed them.

In any country it takes testicular fortitude to out your business partner but in Japan – the country that invented Keiretsu or informal business group, this seems unfathomable.

You may recall that when the Volkswagen emissions scandal broke, I wondered, how could executives not know? The company made a breakthrough that got them awards and major industry recognition and no one in management wondered how it was done? Ditto for the competition – BMW and Mercedes were one-upped by VW and no one wondered how?

Well, now we know that it seems most everyone at VW knew what was going on as dozens of code words were used to disguise the cheating and hide the identities of employees who participated in the scandal.

It seems this sort of thing happens all the time and the auto industry plays dumb. Also, the VW scandal seems far worse than what happened at Mitsubishi.

In closing, lets give Nissan a whole lot of love for doing the right thing. They may feel repercussions for their honesty in the future. Perhaps, the people who care about such things will give their cars extra-consideration before making a purchase.

My favorite Nissan, the GT-R

One last point – yes, someone eventually outed Volkswagen but not someone from within the auto industry.