I think for city traffic ICE cars (and more generally, cars) are just unsuited. Stop and go, very low speeds etc. are just the worst case for both fuel usage an

I think for city traffic ICE cars (and more generally, cars) are just unsuited. Stop and go, very low speeds etc. are just the worst case for both fuel usage and pollution (low load = low exhaust temp = catalytic exhaust processing doesn't work properly, problem gets bigger with the engine; e.g. truck exhaust processing basically doesn't do much at all in cities). And you get a choice of "do I want to wear the engine or do I want to minimize exhaust and fuel"... For general driving I find it easier to drive a diesel for low consumption compared to petrol. I also like how diesels tend to have nice long gearing, leading to low RPMs and less noise. Pick-up from low RPMs is also quite nice, a diesel has no issues to start accelerating from, say, 1200 rpm (with practically all constant speed driving falling between 1000 and ~1600ish rpm for me, to see more you'll need the Autobahn). For petrolhead(?) purposes I have to say that diesel tend to sound like a loose bag of bolts when you rev them (which you normally won't do), obviously it's not going to sound like a race car. In that regard tiny (1 liter, 1.2 liter) non-DI, non-turbo petrol engines tend to surprise... :) though at least some of these are way worse at fuel efficiency than you'd expect.