On March 29, Volkswagen posted a half-baked announcement that they were changing their name to “Voltswagen”, to highlight their move to electric vehicles. Then later took that announcement down from their website, but spokespeople confirmed the change. The next day, they put the announcement back up. However, later that same day, they stated that actually, no, no name change was occurring.

Volkswagen is now explaining it was apparently an elaborately overdesigned April Fool’s prank, one that somehow launched three days before the holiday and burned through its entire life cycle before the end of March.

It was, in a word, a mess. It was also beyond foolish, given that the company was so recently caught up in a global emissions scandal. Lying directly to the press is seldom a good move, but it’s especially dumb when your credibility is already bruised.