RE: Diesel myths debunked

[blueg33]

I am not wedded to diesels, far from it, but I am not sure about the reliability point, at least as far as my experience goes (77.6 bhp per litre for my TDI compared with 80.66 for the petrol).

86k miles in the diesel and not a single engine problem. 105k miles in the previous one and not a single engine problem (despite driving for 2 miles on petrol by mistake)

[martin mrt]

Great Pretender said:

sleep envy said:

Not trying to be provocative but if given the choice between two cars and everything (cost, mpg, servicing, etc) was the same with the exception of what fuel they used I'd be hard pressed to pick between the two.

90-95% of my miles are now driven in London (I did buy my diesel when I was doing 25k+ PA) and to be honest the way it delivers the power does make it quite an easy way to drive through traffic.

This.

Given the choice (everything else being equal), I'd probably take a 335d over a 335i.

I've made that choice twice with absolutely no regrets, and I've sort of been given it again with my work hack,

E46 328i or 330d, I chose the diesel, as it tows better

I can't see me shifting to a petrol car again anytime soon.

[Devil2575]

Motorrad said:

Take a car like a Golf GTi- a lower spec diesel engined Golf costs basically the same, being very generous there's a 15mpg difference in it overall. Like the UK diesel costs more but unlike the UK the cost of fuel is still relatively low. You're talking a saving of a few hundred dollars a year for a far less atrractive vehicle plus your average American isn't going to want to be bothered to hunt around looking for a place that sells diesel. They just want to drive in, tank up and fk off to Jack in the box.

Legislation is the only thing that will drive them into diesel vehicles.

New Golf GTI TSi 3dr with leather list price = £25330 Combined economy figure 38 mpg
New Golf 2.0 TDi 140bhp GT with leather list price = £21830 combined economy 58 mpg.

The Golf GT looks very similar to a GTI and cost a good £3.5k less. That's a nice holiday or a good few more options ticked.

No idea how those prices would change in the US but lets look at the potential savings.
The Golf GT looks very similar to a GTI and cost a good £3.5k less. That's a nice holiday or a good few more options ticked.

Average annual milage in the US is 13476 miles

http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/onh00/bar8.htm

Cost per gallon of diesel $4 (based on previous link I posted)
Cost per litre of premium petrol (which i suspect is what a GTI should be run on)

But for the sake of argument we'll go for regular which was $3.71 a gallon.

Recalculate this to UK gallons and you get:

Diesel = $4.80 per Uk gallon
Regular = $4.45 per UK gallon (based on 1 US gallon = 0.833 UK gallons)

So cost per year based on average milage = $1577.97 Petrol and 1115.23 Diesel

So $463 Dollars.

Ok so not a massive saving but when you look at the average miles covered by male drivers in the 20-54 age range this is up at about 18k a year so the savings will get bigger. $618 for an 18k annual milage, based on regular gas. Buy premium for your GTI and that saving becomes $784.

The other thing to consider is that the Golf is a relatively economuical can compared to many US cars. Imagine the difference between a V8/V6 with an auto box and a 2.0 TDCI. It would easily be over $1000 a year.

I think all that needs to change is fuel prices keep rising in the US and eventually it will happen. Either that or a few people start to try a modern TDCI and realise that for most drivers they are fine. Not for die hard petrol heads granted, but most people aren't.

As for complexity, how would most non petrol heads know that the car was complex? Besides, a lot of petrol engines are getting very complicated now as well.

[frosted]

sealtt said:

I live in central London & work in the city - i drive in to work - this is about 3.0 miles and most of that journey - which can be 20mins-40mins - is spent sitting in congestion. However, I am sitting in a SL with big 5.5l supercharged V8... so every time i pull away i get to hear that great noise and i can still occasionally enjoy gunning it through a tunnel or empty street.

I am only doing about 40 miles per week and so 5mpg or 20mpg doesn't really make any material difference in cash terms. However, I spend a decent amount of actual time in the car each week and a big V8 is massively superior & more enjoyable than just about any diesel I can think of.

So for me, living in a major & congested city makes buying a big engine gas guzzler a no brainer - only if you are doing big mileage on motorways is a diesel worth it.

If you had to cross London twice a day I bet you wouldn't be driving a supercharged v8 .

[StottyZr]

angusc43 said:

StottyZr said:

Throttle response, power bands, torque and gearing.. Oh power delivery. Thinking about how many times these words will be repeated in the next few pages makes me feel sick.

You forgot to mention range.

I missed hp/litre too. Didn't see that one coming. What a stupid figure to base a reliability arguement on

[Devil2575]

dino ferrana said:

Diesel is a lot more expensive than petrol in the US and that is a big issues.

No it isn't.

Check the link I posted previously.

http://www.newyorkstategasprices.com/

[Dave Hedgehog]

blueg33 said:

Dave Hedgehog said:

for someone who drives like an 80 year old granny the A6 is a fine cruiser, i hated it, gutless in the extreme out of its tiny power band, pointless trying to push on it, you end up just going with the flow bored

the S3 whilst in reality a pretty average hot hatch felt like being given the keys to a vayron in comparison to the A6, whoosh red line, whoosh red line, whoosh red line

all comes down to how you drive, if your a plodder driving for economy it makes sense. Except in heavy traffic where there as bad as petrol engines.

For the life of me, I really can't see how you reached your conclusion on the A6 unless you climbed into the car with that conclusion as a preconceived notion.

The A6 is in my garage along with a Tuscan and a 3.0 petrol Subaru, I can categorically state that the A6 is more interesting to drive in a performance sense than the Subaru and at least as interesting as the everyday petrol cars in the same class that I have had before.

The S3 is a totally different type of car a 2 tonne A6 is never going to be the same to drive as a hot hatch, the physics of inertia tells you that. You may just as well say that the M5 has a crap engine because its slower than a Tuscan which has a smaller engine, and we know that would be bks. Equally you could say that a lazy V8 petrol like an RV8 is crap as it delivers its power low down and is out of puff at 6000 rpm, that would also be bks.

So to say the same thing about an engine purely because its diesel is also bks

Do you really think that as a Tuscan owner I drive like an 80 year old granny?

i went into open minded as it was a V6, i have had a lot of different vag oil burners recently but they have all been 4 pots in various guises so i put their performance down to this and hoped the A6 would be different

its not about the performance its how it delivers it, i deeply disliked the power delivery in the A6, its horrible for how i drive day to day, you are either going at warp speed or most of the time pulling out, pause, pause, pause oh st the other cars gonna hit me BOOM gone, then asthmatic mouse syndrome

fuel economy is poor as well, i only got 28mpg out of it ...

if your just wafting along in it on the power band its fine, i don't, i disliked it deeply

[fizz47]

For the past week I have been driving a brand spanking new 640D M Sport with every possible option.

While the car has phenomenal torque and the pick up is better than my own car I still dont like the diesel for this car. Yes it might be great on fuel and understand why people get them, however personally I feel a GT car should be petrol.


People may say you cant even tell its diesel and can barely hear it, but thats bks. Even though its brand new and has all the latest tech you can still hear it rattle away.

Diesel is fine for a workhorse but really think they shouldnt bother to try and package them into a nice GT and disguise it with silly M badges and sport buttons....

[Devil2575]

Dave Hedgehog said:

i deeply disliked the power delivery in the A6, its horrible for [b]how i drive day to day[.b],

fuel economy is poor as well, i only got 28mpg out of it ...

Perhaps the two points are connected?

If you drive a diesel like you normally drive a petrol then it will get rubbish economy.

[infradig]

As I'm not as wealthy as most of 'diesel is the devils fuel' people on here, I have to drive a diesel,simple as that. I do 60k miles a year and have just changed from a company Merc 350 diesl to a Chrysler 300 basically the same 3.0 turbodiesel but with 50bhp and 2gears less in the 300. I considered a 550i BMW but after doing a swap with a friend one weekend found I couldn't live with the stupidly small range although when cruising on the motorway it would show over 30 on the trip computer.The only noticeable'advantage' was the throttle response which I actually found made progress less smooth due to my bad driving( brain corrupted by years of diesels)the actual performance felt pretty similar in normal driving.

To sum up if money were no object I'd prefer petrol in a road car,but obviously not in a 4wd,as I'm sure anyone who's tried to offroad in a V8 knows,no amount of wd-40,chain grease or condoms is ever going to prevent the shame of been towed through deep water by a smelly Tdi with a snorkel.

[cv01jw]

I used to dislike diesels, primarily because my only real experience of them was my then girlfriends 1.5D 106 which she then replaced with a 1.5D Saxo. I drove my Dad's 1.8TD Escort a couple of times too, which probably didn't help either.

I have had 9 cars, all of them petrol, until recently when I changed to a V70 with a 2.5TDi engine bought in from Audi. I love it, I geniunely prefer it to all but one of my previous car engines (1.8VVC in a Rover 25 GTi), and can't see myself going back to petrol for a daily driver.

[Dave Hedgehog]

Devil2575 said:

Dave Hedgehog said:

i deeply disliked the power delivery in the A6, its horrible for [b]how i drive day to day[.b],

fuel economy is poor as well, i only got 28mpg out of it ...

Perhaps the two points are connected?

If you drive a diesel like you normally drive a petrol then it will get rubbish economy.

very much so, there not for me

i would rather have the OHs polo GTi than the V6 A6 if i wanted better economy, fun, power across the rev range and a real world 40mpg

Edited by Dave Hedgehog on Friday 27th April 15:45

[blueg33]

Dave Hedgehog said:

i went into open minded as it was a V6, i have had a lot of different vag oil burners recently but they have all been 4 pots in various guises so i put their performance down to this and hoped the A6 would be different

its not about the performance its how it delivers it, i deeply disliked the power delivery in the A6, its horrible for how i drive day to day, you are either going at warp speed or most of the time pulling out, pause, pause, pause oh st the other cars gonna hit me BOOM gone, then asthmatic mouse syndrome

fuel economy is poor as well, i only got 28mpg out of it ...

if your just wafting along in it on the power band its fine, i don't, i disliked it deeply

Its always in its power band apart from pulling away (unless you had a manual?). I concede that until you are used to it pulling away from stationary does show up the lag, but you get used to moderating the throttle as soon as the car is moving. In sport mode in the traffic light drag race its quicker than most cars. You needed to adapt your driving style more, I have to adapt between my various cars, just because I can't boot the throttle from the Tuscan from standstill doesn't make it a bad car, the same principle applies with the audi. I do think you missed the point that cruising at 2000 rpm in a diesl it is always in its peak power band, but a petrol won't be. If I was to cruise in 5th at peak power band in the Subaru I would be doing 125 mph.

Mine has averaged 36mpg over 86k miles

[Devil2575]

Dave Hedgehog said:

Devil2575 said:

Dave Hedgehog said:

i deeply disliked the power delivery in the A6, its horrible for [b]how i drive day to day[.b],

fuel economy is poor as well, i only got 28mpg out of it ...

Perhaps the two points are connected?

If you drive a diesel like you normally drive a petrol then it will get rubbish economy.

very much so, there not for me

I had this when I first drove a Diesel, an 07 VW Passat. I couldn't work out why it got rubbish economy. They I started to alter the way I drove it and it...

By the end of a 400 mile round trip i'd improved the mpg on the trip computer from 35 to 55 mpg.

Boring yes but in a boring car sitting on the motorway a petrol engine is not really any more exciting, IMHO.

[J4CKO]

"Beyond the palace Diesel-powered drones scream down the boulevard"

Nope, doesnt work for me.

[bodhi]

After running a 330d for 4 months I can definitely see the appeal of a dag dag, 325i performance for 318i fuel economy sounds pretty good to me, however they really aren;t for me. Yes the MPG is nice, and the grunt from 2000 rpm is impressive, however not as impressive as the grunt my old 328i had from 3000 rpm up to the redline. Again from 2000 rpm the diesel sounds fairly decent, however the 328i sounded good throughout the entire rev range, and had a wonderful exhausdt note to enjoy in tunnels and built up areas.

You can cover ground a lot faster in the 330d, however this si down to the advances in the chassis BMW made when they developed the E46 compaed to the E36, I can imagine a 330i being faster still.

If my finances are a bit better when i come to swap I will be moving back to petrol, the gains in MPG aren't enough to make up for the lack of soundtrack, lack of top end (yes even in a 330d, it's best work is done by 3500 rpm), horrible smell when filling up and constant fear of something expensive going bang.

So a 330i or 130i for me next I think....

[Dave Hedgehog]

Devil2575 said:

I had this when I first drove a Diesel, an 07 VW Passat. I couldn't work out why it got rubbish economy. They I started to alter the way I drove it and it...

By the end of a 400 mile round trip i'd improved the mpg on the trip computer from 35 to 55 mpg.

Boring yes but in a boring car sitting on the motorway a petrol engine is not really any more exciting, IMHO.

but thats the thing i dont want to change, honestly i would rather take the train than drive like miss daisy

[Lucas Ayde]

cv01jw said:

I used to dislike diesels, primarily because my only real experience of them was my then girlfriends 1.5D 106 which she then replaced with a 1.5D Saxo. I drove my Dad's 1.8TD Escort a couple of times too, which probably didn't help either.

I have had 9 cars, all of them petrol, until recently when I changed to a V70 with a 2.5TDi engine bought in from Audi. I love it, I geniunely prefer it to all but one of my previous car engines (1.8VVC in a Rover 25 GTi), and can't see myself going back to petrol for a daily driver.

I used to have a 1.5D 106 - great little car. A whopping 53bhp on tap but because it was overall a pretty light car it actually was reasonably nippy I thought.

Skinny tyres and a heavy diesel block at the front gave it good grip in snow/ice. Plus 55mpg combined without trying and super cheap servicing and maintenance costs meant extremely low cost motoring. It would typically get through MOTs with about £100 of work and a few times with no work at all. It really liked biodiesel (quiter, no black smoke) and seemed to run OK on a mix of 50% veg oil/50% diesel too - I never dared go higher.

Quite practical too - with the seats down you could carry quite a bit, like a small van.

OK, so it topped out at 85-90mph and overtaking anything travelling at 70 or above could take a while but it could certainly keep up with normal traffic. Also, the head gasket went at 60k miles but was only a couple of hundred quid to replace at the time.

[angusc43]

frosted said:

sealtt said:

I live in central London & work in the city - i drive in to work - this is about 3.0 miles and most of that journey - which can be 20mins-40mins - is spent sitting in congestion. However, I am sitting in a SL with big 5.5l supercharged V8... so every time i pull away i get to hear that great noise and i can still occasionally enjoy gunning it through a tunnel or empty street.

I am only doing about 40 miles per week and so 5mpg or 20mpg doesn't really make any material difference in cash terms. However, I spend a decent amount of actual time in the car each week and a big V8 is massively superior & more enjoyable than just about any diesel I can think of.

So for me, living in a major & congested city makes buying a big engine gas guzzler a no brainer - only if you are doing big mileage on motorways is a diesel worth it.

If you had to cross London twice a day I bet you wouldn't be driving a supercharged v8 .

I did it on Wednesday in a n/a 5.0 V8 and it was fine, thanks. In fact I've been criss crossing London since 2003 in either a 4.3 or a 5.0 V8. Not once in those nine years have I had the urge to buy a diesel. One of the joys of living in London in low mileages. Low mileages = petrol V8's all day long. Or in my case nearly all decade long.

[Andy ap]

Now where did i hear the yanks are 10 years behind us in automotive design.....oh yeah that's right diesels were getting much better over here 10 years ago.

Just took an A3 TDI s-line for a spin round the block to see if i can find any merit in Derv..... laaaaag. BOOST! and before you know it its all over. The Vectra TDi SRi (I know) i drove a few years back was actually better than the Audi! it'll be cold day in hell b4 the yanks take to diesel maybe only in V8 form lol