Volkswagen keeps saying it's very sorry for Dieselgate and that it'll make amends to both customers and just about every government on Earth. Executives have been ousted and a full-scale investigation is taking place. But the whole thing still stinks to high heaven. According to The New York Times, VW prepped a PowerPoint presentation "by a top technology executive" in 2006, showing in detail how the German automaker could cheat on US emissions tests.

How did this presentation get uncovered? Anonymous sources told the NY Times it was discovered as part of the ongoing Dieselgate investigation. Exact details of the presentation have yet to be revealed (give it time), but this could turn out to be the smoking gun US government investigators have been looking for. The presentation proves VW systematically planned to cheat and, more disturbingly, people inside VW "were aware that its diesel engines were polluting significantly more than allowed. Yet company executives repeatedly rejected proposals to improve the emissions equipment."

And it gets worse: When regulators began asking questions in 2014 concerning VW diesel emissions, the automaker still continued to install the cheating software "for more than a year." VW engineers, the presentation reportedly proves, evolved the cheat software over the years, upgrading it when necessary so that it would always be able to detect when a regulatory test was happening. Of course, lawyers for VW and several of its former executives declined to comment.