Why are people buying expensive diesels?

[GetCarter]

AreOut said:

GetCarter said:

Because some of us aren't interested in saving money, but increasing range.

is 50-100 miles increased range really worth it then? If you do as much as 3000 miles a month it means 5 goings to gas station instead of 6, big fckn deal.

It's over 150 miles per tank and the nearest fuel is a 40 mile round trip.

[ZX10R NIN]

Monkeylegend said:

AreOut said:

Monkeylegend said:

You say that as if petrol cars don't depreciate. Have I missed something?

erm they do as much, but the point is if you can lose 20K a year on depreciation will 1-2K for fuel really make a difference?

£2k is not to be sniffed at, so yes it does make a difference.

It also makes a difference when you also want to add 2.5k for LPG

[gizlaroc]

apotts said:

Maybe because my 535d is a saloon....:

Mine was a 2005 model.

But in the same vein, a newer petrol would fair better as well.


Also, my X3 always starts off saying 780 miles from a fill up, reality is more like 520 by the time I fill up again.

Edited by gizlaroc on Sunday 11th October 10:55

[gizlaroc]

ZX10R NIN said:

I will get an easy 700+ miles out of my CLK diesel on a run as an average I'll see 570 miles out of a tank,

So not that much different then.

ZX10R NIN said:

now comparing a 1.4 to a 3.0 then of course the 1.4 will be better comparing it to a 1.4 diesel would be more relevant, as an average my CLK320cdi is averaging 46.2mpg the D3 is averaging 48.6mpg over the last 5 months, if you put that 1.4T lump in an A6 for example do you think you'd get better fuel than the same A6 with a 3.0tdi lump in it?

For example the 1.0 petrol Mondeo has a claimed mpg of 55.4 mpg 0-60mph in 11.6 secs the 2.0tdci's claimed figures are 58.9mpg 0-60mph in 9.9 secs

But I was comparing the 150bhp 1.4T with my 130bhp 1.9tdi and the new 2.0tdi.
I wouldn't put that in an A6, the 2.0T would be far better suited and I don't think there would be much in it consumption wise. Maybe 6mpg?



I just don't seem to get the benefit from diesel you seem to get, sure my OBC says I am getting those figures on my X3, but the reality is very different.
My OBC was showing 44.8mpg, no matter how many times I reset it, it always ended up back at 44.8 after a tank or two of driving. However, calculated figures are more like 36/37mpg.
I have no adjusted the OBC with a 15% negative adjustment and it now seems to be pretty spot on, it always ends up at 36/37mpg.

I do lots of 100 mile journeys in my X3, so ideal for a diesel, and still struggles to get much better consumption wise than my 10 year old 2.0T A4.
On the school run which is around 8 miles, the 2.0T actually beats the X3 by 2mpg, 31mph vs 29mpg.


But if you are getting a genuine 600 miles per tank from your D3 then maybe I need to reconsider my next car, I had decided the X3 was my last diesel, but always willing to try something that can genuinely save me some money and be fun.

[Pan Pan Pan]

Single tank range was the reason I have a diesel, especially as quite a few journeys were abroad, to places I have not been before, and where the location of fuel stations (and significantly their opening times) could be a problem.
In very out of the way places, usually diesel is available, for their farm equipment if nothing else.
Even on French motorways the service stations can be often rammed with people waiting to reach the fuel pumps, especially during holiday periods. On long foreign trips the ability to sail past all of them on a 900 plus mile round trip is useful, in terms of both time, and avoiding the worry of approaching an empty tank, but not knowing where the next (open) fuel station might be, especially in the middle of the night.
As posted before, people should just buy whatever car/s which best suit `their' particular needs, and ignore those, who for some reason want them to buy and drive a vehicle which does not.

[ZX10R NIN]

gizlaroc said:

But I was comparing the 150bhp 1.4T with my 130bhp 1.9tdi and the new 2.0tdi.
I wouldn't put that in an A6, the 2.0T would be far better suited and I don't think there would be much in it consumption wise. Maybe 6mpg?



I just don't seem to get the benefit from diesel you seem to get, sure my OBC says I am getting those figures on my X3, but the reality is very different.
My OBC was showing 44.8mpg, no matter how many times I reset it, it always ended up back at 44.8 after a tank or two of driving. However, calculated figures are more like 36/37mpg.
I have no adjusted the OBC with a 15% negative adjustment and it now seems to be pretty spot on, it always ends up at 36/37mpg.

I do lots of 100 mile journeys in my X3, so ideal for a diesel, and still struggles to get much better consumption wise than my 10 year old 2.0T A4.
On the school run which is around 8 miles, the 2.0T actually beats the X3 by 2mpg, 31mph vs 29mpg.


But if you are getting a genuine 600 miles per tank from your D3 then maybe I need to reconsider my next car, I had decided the X3 was my last diesel, but always willing to try something that can genuinely save me some money and be fun.

The OH regularly sees 600 miles per tank I don't go by the OBC but by miles covered between fill ups. With the X3 the drivetrain loss will be worse unless your A4 is a quattro model?
The comparison for me is always about model for model for example do you think a 2.0T X3 would be better on fuel than the diesel one?

For an 8 mile school run shouldn't you be driving the Petrol version?

[ZX10R NIN]

gizlaroc said:

ZX10R NIN said:

I will get an easy 700+ miles out of my CLK diesel on a run as an average I'll see 570 miles out of a tank,

So not that much different then.

A fair bit of a difference when you consider engine size, a more powerful 3.0 diesel is giving better fuel economy than a 2.0T with the added bonus of better performance as the cherry on top.

For example using BMW's own figures (for the Xdrive 3 Series) if you could buy a 2.0T X3 you'd be 16mpg worse off.

[gizlaroc]

ZX10R NIN said:

The OH regularly sees 600 miles per tank I don't go by the OBC but by miles covered between fill ups. With the X3 the drivetrain loss will be worse unless your A4 is a quattro model?
The comparison for me is always about model for model for example do you think a 2.0T X3 would be better on fuel than the diesel one?

For an 8 mile school run shouldn't you be driving the Petrol version?

The guys in Europe with the 28i seem to be using around 8-9L/km, so no, but I could live with a loss of 3-5mpg.

Yeah I do drive the petrol, unless I am dropping him off on the way to London.

I went to Mountfitchet Castle yesterday, which is around 140 miles there and back, and just wafted along at 70mph and saw 40mpg from the 2.0T. The X3 would have probably seen closer to 50mpg.

There is a difference, I am not arguing there isn't, but we do around 25,000 miles a year now down from 40,000 miles and the cost difference is just so negligible that I am not sure it is worth it.


You have a D3, a car that is starting at £48,000 before options, you know you will loose £20,000 over 3 years at best doing 12k miles a year, that is £550 a month on depreciation alone, to me the saving of £10 a week on fuel, which is saying the petrol is 40% worse mpg wise, makes little sense to me.

Of course the B3 is some £9k more, so I understand going D3. But those that go for a new 335d over a 340i and then say it is to save money at the pump just sound a bit bonkers. I know when I sold my 335i touring I got around £4k more than the 335d tourings were at the time, £29k vs £25k for the diesel, even though the 335i was no more expensive to start with, in fact it may have been a bit cheaper.


I have nothing against people buying diesel, the only think I don't get is the percentage difference as a overall cost when it comes to fuel is so tiny using it as a justification just sounds like someone who hasn't done the maths.

[MrBarry123]

Pan Pan Pan said:

Single tank range was the reason I have a diesel, especially as quite a few journeys were abroad, to places I have not been before, and where the location of fuel stations (and significantly their opening times) could be a problem.
In very out of the way places, usually diesel is available, for their farm equipment if nothing else.
Even on French motorways the service stations can be often rammed with people waiting to reach the fuel pumps, especially during holiday periods. On long foreign trips the ability to sail past all of them on a 900 plus mile round trip is useful, in terms of both time, and avoiding the worry of approaching an empty tank, but not knowing where the next (open) fuel station might be, especially in the middle of the night.
As posted before, people should just buy whatever car/s which best suit `their' particular needs, and ignore those, who for some reason want them to buy and drive a vehicle which does not.

Agreed - the single tank range on a diesel is a massive perk.

In my previous car, I could drive to Newcastle and back (597 miles) and still have 90 miles remaining (range of almost 700 miles). Nowadays, I have to fill up at around 350 miles (to avoid getting too low) and only have 90 miles remaining when I get back (a range of only around 350 miles on each tank).

Plus, the journey takes about 45 minutes longer because I have to be steadier in order to get a reasonable mpg i.e. just above 30mpg.

[gizlaroc]

ZX10R NIN said:

A fair bit of a difference when you consider engine size, a more powerful 3.0 diesel is giving better fuel economy than a 2.0T with the added bonus of better performance as the cherry on top.

For example using BMW's own figures (for the Xdrive 3 Series) if you could buy a 2.0T X3 you'd be 16mpg worse off.

My 2.0T is quicker than my 320cdi was, not much but it is quicker. Edit: mine is mapped, AMD stage one, 258bhp.

But the official figures are a nonsense, and because they are done with a car up to temperature they throw the real world figures out far more for diesels.

As I said above, there is no way on earth the difference is 16mpg, it is more like 6mpg or 20%.

[ZX10R NIN]

gizlaroc said:

The guys in Europe with the 28i seem to be using around 8-9L/km, so no, but I could live with a loss of 3-5mpg.

Yeah I do drive the petrol, unless I am dropping him off on the way to London.

I went to Mountfitchet Castle yesterday, which is around 140 miles there and back, and just wafted along at 70mph and saw 40mpg from the 2.0T. The X3 would have probably seen closer to 50mpg.

There is a difference, I am not arguing there isn't, but we do around 25,000 miles a year now down from 40,000 miles and the cost difference is just so negligible that I am not sure it is worth it.


You have a D3, a car that is starting at £48,000 before options, you know you will loose £20,000 over 3 years at best doing 12k miles a year, that is £550 a month on depreciation alone, to me the saving of £10 a week on fuel, which is saying the petrol is 40% worse mpg wise, makes little sense to me.

Of course the B3 is some £9k more, so I understand going D3. But those that go for a new 335d over a 340i and then say it is to save money at the pump just sound a bit bonkers. I know when I sold my 335i touring I got around £4k more than the 335d tourings were at the time, £29k vs £25k for the diesel, even though the 335i was no more expensive to start with, in fact it may have been a bit cheaper.


I have nothing against people buying diesel, the only think I don't get is the percentage difference as a overall cost when it comes to fuel is so tiny using it as a justification just sounds like someone who hasn't done the maths.

I choose the D3 & CLK320cdi because they were the better cars for what we were going to use them for depreciation wise the D3 will lose a lot less than most due to Alpina only making 1800 cars a year, 345bhp & 516lbft never fails to raise a grin under acceleration.
One of my customers who recently sold his much loved 4.8S lost 6k on resale in comparison to the diesel, but he was happy enough to because he picked up a Cayenne Turbo for a good price & funnily enough reckons it's only 3mpg worse, the levels of depreciation will be car dependent, the 320cdi's tend to hold there money better than the 280/350 clk's.

For me people buy the engine that suits their usage best, be it diesel or petrol. Now I think what happens is that when people test drive the petrol & diesel versions of a Panamera (for example) they notice no difference in noise the handling is the same they might notice the extra shove of the diesel, at which point the fact that they save £700 a year with prospect better residuals swings it.

[gizlaroc]

ZX10R NIN said:

I choose the D3 & CLK320cdi because they were the better cars for what we were going to use them for depreciation wise the D3 will lose a lot less than most due to Alpina only making 1800 cars a year, 345bhp & 516lbft never fails to raise a grin under acceleration.
One of my customers who recently sold his much loved 4.8S lost 6k on resale in comparison to the diesel, but he was happy enough to because he picked up a Cayenne Turbo for a good price & funnily enough reckons it's only 3mpg worse, the levels of depreciation will be car dependent, the 320cdi's tend to hold there money better than the 280/350 clk's.

For me people buy the engine that suits their usage best, be it diesel or petrol. Now I think what happens is that when people test drive the petrol & diesel versions of a Panamera (for example) they notice no difference in noise the handling is the same they might notice the extra shove of the diesel, at which point the fact that they save £700 a year with prospect better residuals swings it.

I agree with all that.

It just irks me when people say their petrol car was costing them 50% more than the diesel that replaced. It is a nonsense.
They may well put £50 in the tank instead of £75 every fortnight, but they forget about how much the car is costing them, in depreciation, servicing, tyres, insurance etc. etc. £50 a month more in fuel maybe less than 5% overall cost in many cases.

I think one problem is people notice fuel prices as you have to pay it out every week.

[ZX10R NIN]

When we traveled to Newcastle for a couple of trips, my colleague used his S4 3.0tfsi the difference on that one journey was £70.00 in fuel between that & my CLK diesel the difference with D3 was £76 the average speeds were nigh on identical & in terms of performance some unscientific roll on tests showed there was nothing in it between the S4 & CLK while the D3 had the edge on both.

Now my CLK63 would have dispatched the lot but I might have struggled to make the whole trip without sweating over fuel.

[ZX10R NIN]

gizlaroc said:

I agree with all that.

It just irks me when people say their petrol car was costing them 50% more than the diesel that replaced. It is a nonsense.
They may well put £50 in the tank instead of £75 every fortnight, but they forget about how much the car is costing them, in depreciation, servicing, tyres, insurance etc. etc. £50 a month more in fuel maybe less than 5% overall cost in many cases.

I think one problem is people notice fuel prices as you have to pay it out every week.

I partly agree with you but with most new Petrol cars running DFI turbo engines then the running costs are nigh on the same in terms running costs both have high pressure fuel pumps injectors DMF's etc, most 2.0T petrols sell for slightly less than the diesel at resale time.

If you're doing 5k a year buy a petrol the tipping point comes when you're doing around 12k a year

[gizlaroc]

ZX10R NIN said:

I partly agree with you but with most new Petrol cars running DFI turbo engines then the running costs are nigh on the same in terms running costs both have high pressure fuel pumps injectors DMF's etc, most 2.0T petrols sell for slightly less than the diesel at resale time.

If you're doing 5k a year buy a petrol the tipping point comes when you're doing around 12k a year

I didn't mean that diesels cost more to run, I meant a new car costs st loads to run regardless of what fuel you put in. Fuel is just a small percentage of overall costs. People seem to genuinely think that a petrol will cost them 50% more because they just look at official fuel figures. They forgot about all the other costs.

[gizlaroc]

ZX10R NIN said:

When we traveled to Newcastle for a couple of trips, my colleague used his S4 3.0tfsi the difference on that one journey was £70.00 in fuel between that & my CLK diesel the difference with D3 was £76 the average speeds were nigh on identical & in terms of performance some unscientific roll on tests showed there was nothing in it between the S4 & CLK while the D3 had the edge on both.

Now my CLK63 would have dispatched the lot but I might have struggled to make the whole trip without sweating over fuel.

But you can find other comparisons, the S4 has a drink problem imho, most seem to average around 23/24mpg.
Do that same run in a 340i, which is a far better comparison to your D3, and you will see late 30's.
I used to see 38mpg on very fast runs across Europe in my 2006 335i sport touring.

[Fastdruid]

ZX10R NIN said:

I partly agree with you but with most new Petrol cars running DFI turbo engines then the running costs are nigh on the same in terms running costs both have high pressure fuel pumps injectors DMF's etc, most 2.0T petrols sell for slightly less than the diesel at resale time.

DMF's, turbo's, (direct) injectors all have a harder life in a diesel. That's not to say they won't fail on a petrol car but they are more likely to fail on a diesel and in the case of injectors are substantially more expensive if/when they do.

[CorvetteConvert]

The answer to the original question (i don't currently own a diesel either) is the performance to economy ratio; the huge mileages the engines will do untouched; the real- world performance, aided by immense mid-range shove which makes for properly quick cars in the traffic most of us have to drive amongst. Paper figures never tell the whole story of how quick a modern diesel like a 330D or Cayenne 4.2 V8 TD truly are. Resale value also.
There's lots to like about a modern diesel and they have come so far in 10-15 years.
BMW 530D had 204 bhp 12 years ago. Now the same 2993cc capacity straight six can be had with 314 to 375 bhp! With lbft changing from 302 to 550.
Diesels are very strong all-rounders now.

[ZX10R NIN]

gizlaroc said:

But you can find other comparisons, the S4 has a drink problem imho, most seem to average around 23/24mpg.
Do that same run in a 340i, which is a far better comparison to your D3, and you will see late 30's.
I used to see 38mpg on very fast runs across Europe in my 2006 335i sport touring.

on the S4's drink problem I agree, the D3 sits in the 55+mpg range on long runs, the 340i should be an interesting comparison a friend has one on order so I'll wait with interest, my brother had a 335i before his M3 & averaged 29mpg over a year but a good car overall

[ZX10R NIN]

gizlaroc said:

My 2.0T is quicker than my 320cdi was, not much but it is quicker. Edit: mine is mapped, AMD stage one, 258bhp.

But the official figures are a nonsense, and because they are done with a car up to temperature they throw the real world figures out far more for diesels.

As I said above, there is no way on earth the difference is 16mpg, it is more like 6mpg or 20%.

My 320cdi is mapped & with a bigger intercooler 301bhp 479lbft, I agree official figures are rubbish & that parts for new cars seem to be very high don't get me started on the price of certain car makers air flow meters

I know what you mean about factoring other costs other than fuel, it always makes me smile when I here people complaining about the price of a tyre but the first option they clicked was the 20" wheel lol.