Diesel Engined Cars in the United States?

Question

What would anyone recommend for a diesel engined car available in the United States? Cars only please, no trucks, or SUV's.

What would anyone recommend for a diesel engined car available in the United States? Cars only please, no trucks, or SUV's.
Here in the Detroit area diesal fuel is usually cheaper that regular unleaded, plus the improved gas mileage sounds promising.

Answer 1

That really depends on how much you want to spend.
If money is no object, I would recommend one of the diesel Mercedes Benz models.
If you have a budget that is less than the price of a Mercedes, then I would recommend a Volkswagen. They make a diesel engine version of the Jetta that seems to be pretty good.

Answer 2

Its not clear-cut. It may depend on the environment you live in, and the type of driving you do - but a normal petrol car is usually not an environmentally friendly option. The environmentally friendly options are: Diesel CNG LPG Hybrid E85 / Ethanol. If you live in a city, or any other area, that suffers from a build-up of particulates, then you should avoid a diesel unless fitted with a particulate filter. Your best bet here will probably be E85, CNG or LPG as these have low carbon content and burn cleanly - see which fuel is available locally. However, the inherent efficiency of a diesel engine means it produces less CO2 than the spark ignition engine used by all the other options, despite the diesel fuel's higher carbon content. If you do mostly stop-start town driving, a hybrid is likely to be the most environmentally friendly, provided you can adapt your driving style to make the most of the regenerative braking (where instead of turning your kinetic energy into heat, it turns it into electricity, stored in batteries, which is then used to get you moving again). If you do mostly motorway driving, or other reasonably steady-speed driving, you don't get any advantage from a hybrid, so diesel is the best bet due to its efficient engine. The E85 or Ethanol option is a trickier one to work out. In theory the CO2 produced by burning the ethanol has been captured by growing the plants used to produce the fuel, so is not additional carbon in the atmosphere. However in real life the production of ethanol isn't quite that efficient, and there is no definitive answer at present to how environmentally friendly it really is. The big advantage of petrol and diesel are the availability of the fuel - there's no point buying an E85 compatible car if you have to drive 40 (polluting) miles to get to the E85 filling station. However, if you don't do many miles, you need to consider the environmental effect of producing the car and getting it to you, not the environmental effect of using it. In this case, you should choose the simplest, most locally produced car - in the UK this is probably a base-spec petrol-engined Nissan Micra (A Toyota Aygo would be a very good choice if you lived closer to the factory in the Czech Republic). I did warn you it wasn't clear cut.

Answer 3

VW is the most popular, I don't know why you are buying it but I would assume its to save on gas, if so just remember the extra cost of the diesel will usually outweigh that savings.

10 yrs in biz

Answer 4

best buy and resale is the Mercedes ---- don't buy the VW...