On Friday palladium prices surged a more than 9% gain for the week, their largest since December 2011, as the Volkswagen scandal supported demand prospects for the metal.
Analysts at Macquarie Research said in a recent note that the scandal affecting VW and BMW diesel emissions will "be supportive of more gasoline-powered vehicles, which almost always use palladium catalysts."
Meanwhile, a number of other analysts pointed to the same tendency.
On Friday, December palladium settled at $667.60 an ounce, up $11.15, or 1.7%, for the session.
The contract was up 9.3% from the settlement last Friday - which is the biggest one-week gain since the week ended Dec. 2, 2011, when prices jumped 13.3%.
News of the scandal broke last Sunday, with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency accusing Volkswagen of equipping certain diesel cars sold in the U.S. with software used to cheat pollution standards.
Platinum futures, which are used in catalytic converters for diesel vehicles, saw their October contract lose 3.4% for the week.
Last week, VW admitted that up to 11 million vehicles it made could be misreporting their true emission levels. The markets crashed on hearing the news, wiping significant value off the company.
Four days later, a German newspaper claimed diesel engines of German auto giant BMW were "significantly" exceeding regulatory limits.
