Mickey_D....or anyone else that knows.

[The_Dark_Side]

a question has been bouncing around the inside of my cranium for the last few days so i figured the best place to clear the whole thing up is in here.
so,
do diesel cars sell in the US and if so how common/rare are they?
i can honestly say in all the time i've spent there, bearing in mind i lived there for a while too, i've never seen one.
now granted i wasn't exactly looking for one but it seems to me that if they were common i'd have noticed at least ONE of the damn things.

all replies read with interest.

 

[NickXX]

I believe Diesel cars are actually banned in some states such as California due to emissions rules. I believe the quality of diesel fuel over there isn't as good as the stuff we get in europe either.

Think it's slowly catching on after the success of some of the recent Merc E-class diesel engines.

 

[The_Dark_Side]

I believe Diesel cars are actually banned in some states such as California due to emissions rules. I believe the quality of diesel fuel over there isn't as good as the stuff we get in europe either.

Think it's slowly catching on after the success of some of the recent Merc E-class diesel engines.

can you imagine how cheap it'll be to run a diesel car over there?
V10 Phaeton please.

 

[NickXX]

can you imagine how cheap it'll be to run a diesel car over there?
V10 Phaeton please.

Heh, I think this is what is slowly being realised as petrol prices creep up.

In the states where diesel was legal, GM pretty much ruined the appeal of the diesel engine in the late 70s with the LF9/LF7/LT6 V8 and V6 diesels which turned out to be woefully unreliable. The unreliability issue was partly due to the poor quality of fuel available. I don't believe GM built any domestic diesel engines since. This stigma has been hard to shrug off I guess.

 

[The_Dark_Side]

Heh, I think this is what is slowly being realised as petrol prices creep up.

what made me wonder was i've spent a lot of time over there, yet i've never even noticed ONE single car.
being a petrolhead you can't help looking at car badges to see what they are and it struck me that not once had i seen a "D", "Diesel" or "Turbo Diesel" badge.
in fact i can't even recall seeing a diesel pump on the forecourts.

 

[NickXX]

what made me wonder was i've spent a lot of time over there, yet i've never even noticed ONE single car.
being a petrolhead you can't help looking at car badges to see what they are and it struck me that not once had i seen a "D", "Diesel" or "Turbo Diesel" badge.
in fact i can't even recall seeing a diesel pump on the forecourts.

Whereabouts were you? Sounds likely it was in one of the states where domestic diesel cars are illegal.

 

[The_Dark_Side]

Whereabouts were you? Sounds likely it was in one of the states where domestic diesel cars are illegal.

i lived in Texas for a while.
been to Florida, Georgia, California, NYC, Nevada, Connecticut, Philadelphia, Illinois and a few others i'll remember when i'm more awake.

 

[6thElement]

They're rare and for most people why would you worry about diesel economy when petrol is back down under $2/US gallon or ~29p/litre.

 

[The_Dark_Side]

They're rare and for most people why would you worry about diesel economy when petrol is back down under $2/US gallon or ~29p/litre.

because to them it's still not regarded as cheap.

 

[JRS]

because to them it's still not regarded as cheap.

Mostly because it isn't cheap to quite a large segment of the US population. Hell, ask Mickey_D how much he has left of his paycheck after the essential living expenses....

Just to expand on NickXX's point about the GM diesel issues:

The whole thing was caused by corrosion in the injection pump due to low quality fuel. You ended up with an injection cycle that was decidedly off-key, leading to higher cylinder pressures. These ended up lifting the head clean off the block, stretching the head bolts (and often breaking them). Head gasket then leaks coolant into the engine, and with 22.5:1 compression you can guess what happens next....pretty much everything gets broken.

The engines aren't actually all that bad when run on decent quality fuel. All things considered though, I think I'll leave them for some other nut- I mean, enthusiast....yes, that'll do.

 

[K.C. Leblanc]

I'm looking on the Ford and VW sites at the moment. Seams you can buy a Diesel Jetta in the US but no Diesel Focus.

I havn't got time to look at other cars, but I'm sure the imformation is all there.

 

[Jez]

I have only been to the US a handful of times, but i too didnt notice a single diesel car either, and like you i always look at badges and would likely notice this sort of thing.

The petrol stations also didnt seem to feature diesel pumps from what i could gather, or even if they did it must have been on a separate island or something as the pumps we used didnt have a diesel option.

 

[Mr_White]

They get very few diesel cars, they don't even get one single BMW diesel, some of the nicest diesel cars you can get.

Their diesel isn't as high quality as ours either, and in general all the big corporations are holding diesel back.

 

[JRS]

and in general all the big corporations are holding diesel back.

Really? That's odd, because half the Dodge Rams I see every time I go there have a Cummins TurboDiesel powering them. Plenty of the larger pick-up trucks have diesel motors in their line-up - are Ford, GM and Chrysler not big corporations then?

 

[Mr_White]

Really? That's odd, because half the Dodge Rams I see every time I go there have a Cummins TurboDiesel powering them. Plenty of the larger pick-up trucks have diesel motors in their line-up - are Ford, GM and Chrysler not big corporations then?

For a start, VW and the likes can't offer their diesel cars in the US market until the goverment phases in low sulphur diesel, which it keeps delaying, and until it's avaliable, they won't pass US smog tests.

Very few petrol stations actually supply diesel.

Manufacturers charge more for diesel cars, so less people buy them, it's pretty much the opposite here.

They all sound like problems caused by corporations to me.

 

[BillytheImpaler]

can you imagine how cheap it'll be to run a diesel car over there?
V10 Phaeton please.

In most places diesel fuel costs 10 to 30 cents more per gallon than regular unleaded gasoline. It used to e cheaper by about that much but tighter emission restrictions required them to switch to lower sulfur, cleaner burning fuel to cut down on particulates and NOx.

The only manufacturer that consistently does OK with diesel cars (rather than trucks) is VW.

EDIT: Mr. White is completely right too. Desels cost several thousand dollars more than gasoline engines in the same car becasue in most of Europe governments subsidize diesels with tax breaks.

 

[Jonny69]

Trucks are all diesels as far as I could make out.

Audi are using their Lemans win as a selling point to get diesel cars into the market out there. That's what a lot of the announcements at Lemans were about and up on the podium the team manager made a comment about it.

 

[JRS]

For a start, VW and the likes can't offer their diesel cars in the US market until the goverment phases in low sulphur diesel, which it keeps delaying, and until it's avaliable, they won't pass US smog tests.

Pick-up trucks get away with running on lower quality diesel as they are tested on a different level over there. I thought that low sulphur stuff was available in parts of the US and Canada now anyway?

Very few petrol stations actually supply diesel.

I've seen quite a few over in the US and Canada.

Manufacturers charge more for diesel cars, so less people buy them, it's pretty much the opposite here.

Really?

Couple of popular examples:

BMW 318i petrol - list price £21,495
BMW 318d diesel - list price £23,840

Ford Focus Zetec Climate 1.8 petrol - list price £12,197.45
Ford Focus Zetec Climate 1.8 diesel - list price £13,082.55

(prices taken from the respective manufacturer websites if you want to check)

You want me to go on, or did I make my point already? Alright, the difference isn't huge...but diesels are more expensive in quite a few model ranges in the UK.

They all sound like problems caused by corporations to me.

Yes. Let us all fear and loathe the Big Bad Corporations™....

 

[BillytheImpaler]

I've seen quite a few over in the US and Canada.

Sure they exist but they're nowhere near as common. There're 4 stations within a half mile of me. None of them sells diesel. They are more common on high-traffic roads that see more heavy trucks.

 

[Mickey_D]

There's a certain stigma attatched to oil burners over here.

The most common example of a Deisel car that we experienced was the VW Rabbit. It was noisy, smelly, woefully underpowered, and the car ALWAYS had a film of nasty black **** all over it. And I'm talking about the ones that the owners took care of.

Also the maintenance costs tend to be considerably higher over here. Because if you want to get any decent amounts of bhp out of one, you generally have to turbo them (public opnion, not mine). Which translates to $500 just for the mechanic to lift the bonnet and tell you, "Yup, that's a turbo. Oh, you want me to fix it now? Ok, start forking out more cash....".

So you get the instant image of a dirty, nasty, noisy, underpowered car that costs an arm and a leg to fix, and you see why there aren't many over here. And when the fuel costs 25-35% more per gallon, people equate that to higher running costs, too.


As stated above, this is public opinion not mine. It also doesn't help that none of the manufacturers have exactly pushed the issue, either. All we see of Deisels over here are full-sized pickup trucks and semi trucks.