Actually it was mentioned in the post: "I told Julie it had to be something terrible. I mean, a car company? We’d run reports on the launches of new vehicles, l

Actually it was mentioned in the post: "I told Julie it had to be something terrible. I mean, a car company? We’d run reports on the launches of new vehicles, lots of them. They never looked like this." So they knew it wasn't about a new car model, but some negative event.