Yes, the infamous PAM 318 "Brooklyn Bridge special edition" scandal. Made all the more interesting that there is an American saying,
"to sell you the Brooklyn Bridge" referring to a conman taking advantage of gullible people. With this piece of
self inflicted idiocy and damage to the brand, you could almost hear the collective, "hmmmmm, I told you so" from the conspiracy minded and brand bashers. I don't blame anyone for having second thoughts about the brand after reading about the incident. It's a fair cop.
Anyone who has a PAM 318 can trade it in to have the
unmodified ETA6497 movement swapped out with standard
OP. II movement that usually goes into these special editions. Shipping and handling extra - so it wasn't a completely free upgrade unless you walked in. Forum scuttlebutt has it that few PAM 318 owners seem to be taking advantage of the offer even when made aware of the upgrade available to them. Things like these are probably like postage stamp printing mistakes; errors and mishaps make for a better story value adding to the watches' uniqueness.
Nevertheless IMHO, it was an incredible act of lunacy that did a huge amount of damage to the brand in the watch community. It reinforced all the negatives that the brand doubters had against Panerai. Personally, I doubt that mistake was made at a high level of the company (what is a few hundred bucks savings of a watch movement vs. serious reputation damage to a brand). Having worked at a big multi-national company before, I know that upper management has very little knowledge of the lower/middle management doings day to day. My personal theory is that a low level manager in New York or Switzerland swapped in low grade movement to meet a shipment date. For the sake of the company, I hope that guy or gal was fired but in the end it's still management's fault that this was allowed to occur.
Who knows?
It may have even been deliberate disastrously bad joke (based on the brookly bridge saying) that Panerai played on itself and the watch community.
