It's not that simple... the cars VW retrofit and resold to the public under the lawsuit are not really driveable or usable at the level needed to sell to consumers as a new car. They use massive amount of adblue, causing the tanks to run empty and the components to fail frequently. They also have other performance issues. VW couldn't have realistically done this from the beginning and expected consumers to accept it. I'm actually a big fan of these retrofit cars, but only because they are now super cheap, I wouldn't consider the issues they have acceptable in a new car, at new car prices.
VW cars, sure. Because VW designed them with cheating in mind. All other European manufacturers using things like temperature windows (not cheating, but skirting the edge of the text of the regulation, VW was straight out breaking those regulations by illegally cheating. That the other manufacturers were found to be in violation of regulations due the way they interpreted temp windows very loosely is a different thing from outright cheating) don't have those problems. So, either VW included the plan of cheating in the engine design, or they were uncapable of engine design and were thus forced to cheat. Both scenarios seem to be unique to VW at the time, and other companies of VW group.
Quite impressive how VW came out of it, still the biggest car maker and really pushing EVs. It could have easily turned out differently.