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Perhaps my view of German energy industry is not detailed, but what are the advantages of diesel engines in cars if not efficiency? Cold starts can be hard, th

Perhaps my view of German energy industry is not detailed, but what are the advantages of diesel engines in cars if not efficiency? Cold starts can be hard, they smell, make a funny sound, slow to accelerate. Maybe maintenance is easier when there are no spark plugs.

olex 9y ago
> slow to accelerate Have you driven a modern diesel? At lower speeds, they easily beat similar-displacement petrol cars off the line with superior torque. They are weaker at high speeds, but in normal (especially city) driving, a diesel is usually faster than a petrol. But yeah, their main factor for popularity is the cost per km. They use less fuel than petrol engines, and the fuel is less expensive (in Germany). This is offset by higher road tax and insurance somewhat, but for commuters and others who drive a lot (>~20000km per year) diesels are a much more cost effective option in Germany than anything else.
- Svip 9y ago
  Diesel isn't that cost efficient actually, even if you drive a lot. Diesel are more expensive to maintain due to regulations, plus diesel cars tend to be more expensive their petrol counterparts. Moreover, there is depreciation, which tend to be worse for diesel cars, because they are valued less on the second hand market (fairly or unfairly). On average, you should expect to drive at least 150.000+ km before you've broken even on a diesel car with its petrol counterpart. People only look at fuel consumption and fuel prices, but maintenance and depreciation are actually one's biggest loss on a car purchase. And in general petrol comes out on top.
  - YSFEJ4SWJUVU6 9y ago
    Different tax systems can affect the equation even if you disregard that you pay less at the pump for fuel that your car consumes less than a petrol equivalent – lower CO2 figures may also mean that you pay less yearly fees or less taxes on car registration as well. The break-even figure certainly varies by country (as does depreciation of different cars).
  - mywittyname 9y ago
    The premium of diesel engines over petrol is one of the key reasons that we don't get many in the USA (the other issue being emissions). Bob Lutz, former GM CEO, was a big proponent of diesel but repeatedly acknowledged that it doesn't make sense in the USA. The market for people willing to pay the $5,000 premium (in 2007 dollars, mind you) was very small. Americans don't appreciate just how cheap cars in their region are. GM did manage to get a diesel Cruze into the USDM market, and keep it here, but it's low-margin and not a huge seller. A manual diesel Cruze starts at about $25,000 (compared to $17,000 for the base). So it is basically slotted as an "enthusiast" model, just not a high-performance one like Ford and Honda would offer.
  - saiya-jin 9y ago
    What the hell are you talking about? Yes diesels are more expensive, the engine has to withstand much higher pressures internally, so it's made from solid iron rather than aluminium petrol engines (this is common situation, there might be exceptions). You can see it in weight difference - it can be up to 100kg more between similarly-specced engines. Result - you can run a diesel engine for 500,000 km easily, even more but other parts of the car won't usually keep up. Not much support needed apart from changing oil. I didn't have a single issue with my BMW 3l one, drove it for 100k km so far (and bought it with 100k km already), it drives like on my first day. There is a reason why all the buses and trucks have/had them - cheap to run, reliable.
- zaarn 9y ago
  Diesel has a higher maintenance cost too, especially if you only drive short distances. IIRC the main cost here is the catalysator, which basically clogs up if it can't properly heat up. That doesn't happen on short range.
  - c3833174 9y ago
    No, that only applies to cars with the more fancy antiparticulate filter that also requires urea fluid.
    - xyzzyz 9y ago
      No, this has nothing to do with urea fluid. This is just a quirk of some DPFs.
- nawitus 9y ago
  You need power for acceleration, not torque. (But I agree that modern diesel cars accelerate fast enough).
- bluedino 9y ago
  It's an illusion that diesel vehicles are faster than gasoline. Gasoline engines have way more horsepower and are faster that the diesel options (unless Germans are getting neutered or smaller power plants than say, the USA)
  - bdamm 9y ago
    That's a strange statement. More horsepower based on what? I think if you look around, you'll see that the largest and highest horsepower combustion engines all burn diesel. Semi-trailers are exclusively diesel. Your statement on speed is also odd. Record setting cars may burn gas, but your typical car driving around a city or highway needn't ever go faster than 160km/h. Most cars can achieve this, and most modern cars, whether diesel or gas, can achieve this without much difficulty. This leaves us with acceleration, where diesel vs gas is equally unclear. As small diesel engines often ship with turbos, you'd be perhaps comparing a turbocharged 2.0L diesel vs a normally aspirated 2.0L gas engine. Assuming roughly equivalent mass of the cars, with higher low-end torque, the diesel will win just about any street race. If what you're comparing is purchase price to acceleration, then indeed the gas cars may win.
    - mywittyname 9y ago
      > the diesel will win just about any street race. This is really wrong. It's a weird myth that gets perpetuated in America where people don't really drive diesels. Let's compare a 2.0L diesel Golf TDI to a 2.0L petrol Golf GTI. Same car, same displacement, both turbo engines. The Golf TDI does 0-60 in 9.0s and a quarter mile of 17.0s@84 mph. The Golf GTI does 0-60 in 5.7s and a quarter mile of 14.2s@100 mph. There's a staggering difference in performance there. The TDI is so slow that it's genuinely difficult to find a Motor Trend instrument test on a slower car, because at that point, it's too slow to really bother. I found the 2018 Rav4: 0-60 in 9.3s and a quarter mile of 17.0@82.
      - kazinator 9y ago
        If it were true, Formula-1 would use nothing but diesel engines.
- blau3 9y ago
  > Now Germany spews out about same carbon as before giant investments in solar, electricity is four times the price as in US, plus they now have to buy from France cause they don't produce enough. Well, they require a more complex motor which handles higher pressures and supercharging. The picture would be different if you would compare motors with the same price.
morsch 9y ago
Better efficiency in terms of CO2 emissions. Edit -- sources: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es034928d https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es034928d, https://theconversation.com/fact-check-are-diesel-cars-really-more-polluting-than-petrol-cars-76241 https://theconversation.com/fact-check-are-diesel-cars-reall...
teamhappy 9y ago
> what are the advantages of diesel engines in cars if not efficiency? I wouldn't assume that there's a direct relationship between diesel engines still being around and diesel engines still having an advantage over others. Not having to replace your fleet of trucks, buses, trains or whatever is a big enough advantage for most companies. Also, importing energy from other countries isn't a sign of poor energy production. If buying energy from you costs me less than turning my power plant on for a day I'm gonna shut it down and call it a day. Not to mention the fact that energy prices are sometimes negative (i.e., they pay you for taking it).
- mywittyname 9y ago
  This x1000. To add a bit, it should also be noted that many of the reliability issues that passenger diesels have are related to emissions equipment. Industrial diesels engines are not required to have all the fickle equipment, so they are generally much more reliable. So buses and trains have significantly longer service lives and lower operating costs than passenger diesels do. Turns out, diesel engines are wonderful when you don't care about emissions.
mjh2539 9y ago
In support of your statement, in comparison to gasoline, diesel costs less to produce, it has more energy per unit of volume, it is much safer to store and use, diesel engines produce more torque at lower RPMs, and yes, vehicle maintenance is less costly over the length of ownership for the vehicle.
- ableal 9y ago
  > vehicle maintenance is less costly Nowadays with turbos, injectors, particle filters (required in Europe from 2007) and other fiddly bits, it's not clear that diesel engines have an advantage. The particle filters are especially kludgy - most rely on having fuel injected down the exhaust pipe to burn the trapped cinders and regenerate the filter. If you don't run the engine long enough at 2000 rpm or so (to get the right temperature), you may clog the filter and need an expensive replacement. (Worse yet, some designs just use the engine fuel injectors at the "wrong time" to get the piston to expel fuel down the exhaust pipe. This can contaminate the engine oil with diesel fuel and cost a few thousand in repairs, as a colleague learned the hard way ...)
MasterPI 9y ago
> they smell And petrol cars don't smell? > slow to accelerate I think you've never driven a big modern engine diesel car. I have driven this BMW 535d[0] and believe me this monster is not "slow" in any way (0-100km/h in 5.5 seconds). It accelerates faster than the petrol equivalent because of the more torque it produces. [0]http://www.automobile-catalog.com/car/2011/1337945/bmw_535d.html http://www.automobile-catalog.com/car/2011/1337945/bmw_535d....
- pebers 9y ago
  > And petrol cars don't smell? I at least find the smell of diesel actively unpleasant; petrol isn't something I'd choose to smell all the time but it's still nowhere near as bad.
- mywittyname 9y ago
  Sure, a big engine diesel is quick, but small-engine ones are slow. The lack of top-end power makes them suffer at highway-speed passing. The diesel Cruze, for example, has a 5% (4mph) lower trap speed at the end of the quarter mile over its gas sibling (with the same 0-60). Also consider that 3.0L I6 diesel has the same 0-60 as a 2.0L turbo four-cylinder Honda Accord, but a huge reduction in highway acceleration (traps 98mph vs. 103mph in the Accord). [0]https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/2017-chevrolet-cruze-hatchback-manual-test-review https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/2017-chevrolet-cruze-ha... [1]https://www.caranddriver.com/chevrolet/cruze https://www.caranddriver.com/chevrolet/cruze [2] https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/2018-honda-accord-20t-automatic-test-review https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/2018-honda-accord-20t-a...
  - Zigurd 9y ago
    Diesels have better torque, which is mostly what feels like "power." Few people travel at top speed, so lower horsepower does not have the same feeling to the driver as high torque.
    - mywittyname 9y ago
      Diesels have literally the worst powerband for automobiles, especially mated to automatic transmissions. Diesels have power down low in the RPMs, but that's never where you are when you need power. When you need to accelerate, you floor the throttle and the transmission downshifts into the upper RPMs. They are good for accelerating 0-40, but they are significantly slower at 40+ -- which is where most people accelerate hard, like merging on the highway or passing. When I merge onto the highway, I use 5500-7000rpms, when I don't want to accelerate quickly, I use 2000rpms. It's why I hate driving diesels: 280ft-lbs at 2000rpms is useless and only 105hp; I want 280ft-lbs at 6500rpms (345hp).
72deluxe 9y ago
I have not had a problem with cold starts with diesels in the decade I've been driving them. I did have a VW Golf with a PD engine but now have a VW with a Common Rail engine. In both cases I prefer them to petrol cars because: a. the torque is great - not slow to accelerate at all. Try one! The PD engine had great low-end torque but the common rail has great torque for the entire power band, which is extensive. Really rapid. Perhaps you were driving an ancient SD-engined vehicle without a turbo?? b. Driving is so smooth; petrol is quicker to respond which is less forgiving. Also, as the engine components are larger and slower moving, they last far longer; my work colleague's 2005 5-series BMW is nearing 250,000 miles and is still supremely fast. (Contrast with a bike engine that goes for 40k or 50k due to high revs?) My 2008 Golf did get smokey but the guy I sold it to has been using the BP cleaning diesel (or the Shell equivalent) and says it doesn't smoke at all any more. I like the sound of them; the non-sporty petrol cars round by me sound like the engine is rattling to pieces (eg my colleague's Vauxhall Astra); with high-performance tuned sports cars then yes the petrol sounds great. I rarely see any V-configuration engines these days. This perspective is from myself in the UK.
blensor 9y ago
Can you please elaborate where you got your data points from. I am a diesel car owner (have been for about 15 years) and I have yet to experience those issues you mention. Currently it has -12°C outside and my car starts just fine.
- Xylakant 9y ago
  Usually diesel fuel in winter contains additives to prevent freezing/clogging the filter. Some diesel cars also have heated filters. I’ve had a diesel car fail due to a frozen/clogged filter in winter, but that was more like -20. It’s rare, but it happens.
- scrumper 9y ago
  Back in the late '90s when I got my first diesel (a Citroen AX, with what was at the time the smallest production diesel power plant available) you'd have to wait many seconds for the glow plugs to warm the car before trying to start it. Diesel also freezes in the extreme cold, though that's not really a major issue in the UK. You could also run it on used cooking oil. In the 20 years since then diesels have undergone massive and very rapid evolutionary changes through tax incentives (massively favoring low CO2, high MPG cars) and resulting fleet buying pressures. The result is what we have now: fabulously complicated, precision-engineered common rail engines with multiple turbochargers, incredible efficiency, almost petrol-like smoothness, weird stuff like urea tanks, and instant starting. If you put old vegetable oil in them they would break instantly and expensively. I went from that AX in 1995 to a new Jaguar XJ6 in 2008 (via lots of petrol cars). The only thing they had in common was the black pump. In no other way were those engines comparable; the Jag was a beautiful, torquey, silky, rumbling thing that felt like a big V8, did 1,000 miles on a single tank, and beat 911s off the traffic lights (well, until 30mph). The AX was an agricultural dinosaur that deafened anyone in it and was so nose heavy you'd break a sweat parking it. One of those cars I could and did keep in tune with a hammer and a can of WD-40; the other needed a team of factory mechanics with computers and an expensive annual service. I sold it as soon as the warranty expired, but the AX was running fine until my sister drove it into a parked car shortly before I got the XJ.
  - 9y ago

olex 9y ago

> slow to accelerate Have you driven a modern diesel? At lower speeds, they easily beat similar-displacement petrol cars off the line with superior torque. They are weaker at high speeds, but in normal (especially city) driving, a diesel is usually faster than a petrol. But yeah, their main factor for popularity is the cost per km. They use less fuel than petrol engines, and the fuel is less expensive (in Germany). This is offset by higher road tax and insurance somewhat, but for commuters and others who drive a lot (>~20000km per year) diesels are a much more cost effective option in Germany than anything else.

Svip 9y ago
Diesel isn't that cost efficient actually, even if you drive a lot. Diesel are more expensive to maintain due to regulations, plus diesel cars tend to be more expensive their petrol counterparts. Moreover, there is depreciation, which tend to be worse for diesel cars, because they are valued less on the second hand market (fairly or unfairly). On average, you should expect to drive at least 150.000+ km before you've broken even on a diesel car with its petrol counterpart. People only look at fuel consumption and fuel prices, but maintenance and depreciation are actually one's biggest loss on a car purchase. And in general petrol comes out on top.
- YSFEJ4SWJUVU6 9y ago
  Different tax systems can affect the equation even if you disregard that you pay less at the pump for fuel that your car consumes less than a petrol equivalent – lower CO2 figures may also mean that you pay less yearly fees or less taxes on car registration as well. The break-even figure certainly varies by country (as does depreciation of different cars).
- mywittyname 9y ago
  The premium of diesel engines over petrol is one of the key reasons that we don't get many in the USA (the other issue being emissions). Bob Lutz, former GM CEO, was a big proponent of diesel but repeatedly acknowledged that it doesn't make sense in the USA. The market for people willing to pay the $5,000 premium (in 2007 dollars, mind you) was very small. Americans don't appreciate just how cheap cars in their region are. GM did manage to get a diesel Cruze into the USDM market, and keep it here, but it's low-margin and not a huge seller. A manual diesel Cruze starts at about $25,000 (compared to $17,000 for the base). So it is basically slotted as an "enthusiast" model, just not a high-performance one like Ford and Honda would offer.
- saiya-jin 9y ago
  What the hell are you talking about? Yes diesels are more expensive, the engine has to withstand much higher pressures internally, so it's made from solid iron rather than aluminium petrol engines (this is common situation, there might be exceptions). You can see it in weight difference - it can be up to 100kg more between similarly-specced engines. Result - you can run a diesel engine for 500,000 km easily, even more but other parts of the car won't usually keep up. Not much support needed apart from changing oil. I didn't have a single issue with my BMW 3l one, drove it for 100k km so far (and bought it with 100k km already), it drives like on my first day. There is a reason why all the buses and trucks have/had them - cheap to run, reliable.
zaarn 9y ago
Diesel has a higher maintenance cost too, especially if you only drive short distances. IIRC the main cost here is the catalysator, which basically clogs up if it can't properly heat up. That doesn't happen on short range.
- c3833174 9y ago
  No, that only applies to cars with the more fancy antiparticulate filter that also requires urea fluid.
  - xyzzyz 9y ago
    No, this has nothing to do with urea fluid. This is just a quirk of some DPFs.
nawitus 9y ago
You need power for acceleration, not torque. (But I agree that modern diesel cars accelerate fast enough).
bluedino 9y ago
It's an illusion that diesel vehicles are faster than gasoline. Gasoline engines have way more horsepower and are faster that the diesel options (unless Germans are getting neutered or smaller power plants than say, the USA)
- bdamm 9y ago
  That's a strange statement. More horsepower based on what? I think if you look around, you'll see that the largest and highest horsepower combustion engines all burn diesel. Semi-trailers are exclusively diesel. Your statement on speed is also odd. Record setting cars may burn gas, but your typical car driving around a city or highway needn't ever go faster than 160km/h. Most cars can achieve this, and most modern cars, whether diesel or gas, can achieve this without much difficulty. This leaves us with acceleration, where diesel vs gas is equally unclear. As small diesel engines often ship with turbos, you'd be perhaps comparing a turbocharged 2.0L diesel vs a normally aspirated 2.0L gas engine. Assuming roughly equivalent mass of the cars, with higher low-end torque, the diesel will win just about any street race. If what you're comparing is purchase price to acceleration, then indeed the gas cars may win.
  - mywittyname 9y ago
    > the diesel will win just about any street race. This is really wrong. It's a weird myth that gets perpetuated in America where people don't really drive diesels. Let's compare a 2.0L diesel Golf TDI to a 2.0L petrol Golf GTI. Same car, same displacement, both turbo engines. The Golf TDI does 0-60 in 9.0s and a quarter mile of 17.0s@84 mph. The Golf GTI does 0-60 in 5.7s and a quarter mile of 14.2s@100 mph. There's a staggering difference in performance there. The TDI is so slow that it's genuinely difficult to find a Motor Trend instrument test on a slower car, because at that point, it's too slow to really bother. I found the 2018 Rav4: 0-60 in 9.3s and a quarter mile of 17.0@82.
    - kazinator 9y ago
      If it were true, Formula-1 would use nothing but diesel engines.
blau3 9y ago
> Now Germany spews out about same carbon as before giant investments in solar, electricity is four times the price as in US, plus they now have to buy from France cause they don't produce enough. Well, they require a more complex motor which handles higher pressures and supercharging. The picture would be different if you would compare motors with the same price.

morsch 9y ago

Better efficiency in terms of CO2 emissions. Edit -- sources: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es034928d https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es034928d, https://theconversation.com/fact-check-are-diesel-cars-really-more-polluting-than-petrol-cars-76241 https://theconversation.com/fact-check-are-diesel-cars-reall...

teamhappy 9y ago

> what are the advantages of diesel engines in cars if not efficiency? I wouldn't assume that there's a direct relationship between diesel engines still being around and diesel engines still having an advantage over others. Not having to replace your fleet of trucks, buses, trains or whatever is a big enough advantage for most companies. Also, importing energy from other countries isn't a sign of poor energy production. If buying energy from you costs me less than turning my power plant on for a day I'm gonna shut it down and call it a day. Not to mention the fact that energy prices are sometimes negative (i.e., they pay you for taking it).

mywittyname 9y ago
This x1000. To add a bit, it should also be noted that many of the reliability issues that passenger diesels have are related to emissions equipment. Industrial diesels engines are not required to have all the fickle equipment, so they are generally much more reliable. So buses and trains have significantly longer service lives and lower operating costs than passenger diesels do. Turns out, diesel engines are wonderful when you don't care about emissions.

mjh2539 9y ago

In support of your statement, in comparison to gasoline, diesel costs less to produce, it has more energy per unit of volume, it is much safer to store and use, diesel engines produce more torque at lower RPMs, and yes, vehicle maintenance is less costly over the length of ownership for the vehicle.

ableal 9y ago
> vehicle maintenance is less costly Nowadays with turbos, injectors, particle filters (required in Europe from 2007) and other fiddly bits, it's not clear that diesel engines have an advantage. The particle filters are especially kludgy - most rely on having fuel injected down the exhaust pipe to burn the trapped cinders and regenerate the filter. If you don't run the engine long enough at 2000 rpm or so (to get the right temperature), you may clog the filter and need an expensive replacement. (Worse yet, some designs just use the engine fuel injectors at the "wrong time" to get the piston to expel fuel down the exhaust pipe. This can contaminate the engine oil with diesel fuel and cost a few thousand in repairs, as a colleague learned the hard way ...)

MasterPI 9y ago

> they smell And petrol cars don't smell? > slow to accelerate I think you've never driven a big modern engine diesel car. I have driven this BMW 535d[0] and believe me this monster is not "slow" in any way (0-100km/h in 5.5 seconds). It accelerates faster than the petrol equivalent because of the more torque it produces. [0]http://www.automobile-catalog.com/car/2011/1337945/bmw_535d.html http://www.automobile-catalog.com/car/2011/1337945/bmw_535d....

pebers 9y ago
> And petrol cars don't smell? I at least find the smell of diesel actively unpleasant; petrol isn't something I'd choose to smell all the time but it's still nowhere near as bad.
mywittyname 9y ago
Sure, a big engine diesel is quick, but small-engine ones are slow. The lack of top-end power makes them suffer at highway-speed passing. The diesel Cruze, for example, has a 5% (4mph) lower trap speed at the end of the quarter mile over its gas sibling (with the same 0-60). Also consider that 3.0L I6 diesel has the same 0-60 as a 2.0L turbo four-cylinder Honda Accord, but a huge reduction in highway acceleration (traps 98mph vs. 103mph in the Accord). [0]https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/2017-chevrolet-cruze-hatchback-manual-test-review https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/2017-chevrolet-cruze-ha... [1]https://www.caranddriver.com/chevrolet/cruze https://www.caranddriver.com/chevrolet/cruze [2] https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/2018-honda-accord-20t-automatic-test-review https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/2018-honda-accord-20t-a...
- Zigurd 9y ago
  Diesels have better torque, which is mostly what feels like "power." Few people travel at top speed, so lower horsepower does not have the same feeling to the driver as high torque.
  - mywittyname 9y ago
    Diesels have literally the worst powerband for automobiles, especially mated to automatic transmissions. Diesels have power down low in the RPMs, but that's never where you are when you need power. When you need to accelerate, you floor the throttle and the transmission downshifts into the upper RPMs. They are good for accelerating 0-40, but they are significantly slower at 40+ -- which is where most people accelerate hard, like merging on the highway or passing. When I merge onto the highway, I use 5500-7000rpms, when I don't want to accelerate quickly, I use 2000rpms. It's why I hate driving diesels: 280ft-lbs at 2000rpms is useless and only 105hp; I want 280ft-lbs at 6500rpms (345hp).

72deluxe 9y ago

I have not had a problem with cold starts with diesels in the decade I've been driving them. I did have a VW Golf with a PD engine but now have a VW with a Common Rail engine. In both cases I prefer them to petrol cars because: a. the torque is great - not slow to accelerate at all. Try one! The PD engine had great low-end torque but the common rail has great torque for the entire power band, which is extensive. Really rapid. Perhaps you were driving an ancient SD-engined vehicle without a turbo?? b. Driving is so smooth; petrol is quicker to respond which is less forgiving. Also, as the engine components are larger and slower moving, they last far longer; my work colleague's 2005 5-series BMW is nearing 250,000 miles and is still supremely fast. (Contrast with a bike engine that goes for 40k or 50k due to high revs?) My 2008 Golf did get smokey but the guy I sold it to has been using the BP cleaning diesel (or the Shell equivalent) and says it doesn't smoke at all any more. I like the sound of them; the non-sporty petrol cars round by me sound like the engine is rattling to pieces (eg my colleague's Vauxhall Astra); with high-performance tuned sports cars then yes the petrol sounds great. I rarely see any V-configuration engines these days. This perspective is from myself in the UK.

blensor 9y ago

Can you please elaborate where you got your data points from. I am a diesel car owner (have been for about 15 years) and I have yet to experience those issues you mention. Currently it has -12°C outside and my car starts just fine.

Xylakant 9y ago
Usually diesel fuel in winter contains additives to prevent freezing/clogging the filter. Some diesel cars also have heated filters. I’ve had a diesel car fail due to a frozen/clogged filter in winter, but that was more like -20. It’s rare, but it happens.
scrumper 9y ago
Back in the late '90s when I got my first diesel (a Citroen AX, with what was at the time the smallest production diesel power plant available) you'd have to wait many seconds for the glow plugs to warm the car before trying to start it. Diesel also freezes in the extreme cold, though that's not really a major issue in the UK. You could also run it on used cooking oil. In the 20 years since then diesels have undergone massive and very rapid evolutionary changes through tax incentives (massively favoring low CO2, high MPG cars) and resulting fleet buying pressures. The result is what we have now: fabulously complicated, precision-engineered common rail engines with multiple turbochargers, incredible efficiency, almost petrol-like smoothness, weird stuff like urea tanks, and instant starting. If you put old vegetable oil in them they would break instantly and expensively. I went from that AX in 1995 to a new Jaguar XJ6 in 2008 (via lots of petrol cars). The only thing they had in common was the black pump. In no other way were those engines comparable; the Jag was a beautiful, torquey, silky, rumbling thing that felt like a big V8, did 1,000 miles on a single tank, and beat 911s off the traffic lights (well, until 30mph). The AX was an agricultural dinosaur that deafened anyone in it and was so nose heavy you'd break a sweat parking it. One of those cars I could and did keep in tune with a hammer and a can of WD-40; the other needed a team of factory mechanics with computers and an expensive annual service. I sold it as soon as the warranty expired, but the AX was running fine until my sister drove it into a parked car shortly before I got the XJ.
- 9y ago