There are many reasons why diesel isn't as prevalent in the US as it is in Europe. The first being that most of the driving done in Europe is in cities with stop and go traffic, something that diesels do very well. Think of how most school buses are diesel. If everyone just started driving on the interstate with diesels, while they would still be getting decent milage, it wouldn't be the same as European models. The main reason diesels haven't been implemented in the US though is because of emission standards. In Europe, because of the price of gas, fuel milage is preferred over lowering emissions. While there are close to emissionless diesel fuels out there, they are not available enough for diesels to be considered low emissions. A final point is that there are not nearly as many diesel stations in the US as there are in Europe. To add to that, diesel in America can cost nearly a dollar more where I'm from. Go to your local gas station (if it has diesel) and tell me if you'd rather be paying that price. When I can get a Ford Focus for $16,000 which gets 35mpg on regular gas diesel just doesn't provide enough benefits to be worth it, yet. I think if some American car makers got on board with diesel, we could see a benefit in 5-10 years but it might be too late at that point. It comes down to where companies want to spend their research and marketing budget and, in their eyes, it's just not worth it in the US.

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DasGluten: An interesting perspective, but you failed to make your case. Whether or not we drive diesels in the US should be decided by the drivers, not an overbearing government. Everyone I have talked to with a VW TDI wouldn't trade it for a Prius.

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@ DasGluten:

It's amazing how far off you are in your assessment.

Diesels actually do far better on the open road than they do in city driving(i.e. stop and go traffic).

In regards to your school bus comment, I suspect that diesels are often chosen for the same reason that semi-trucks and other large equipment use diesel engines virtually across the board. Diesels are very good at moving large, heavy loads efficiently. At least more efficiently than a comparably-powered gasoline engine could do in the same role. It has very little to do with the stop and go aspect. Reliabilty also has a lot to do with it. Commercial diesel engines can often be used for millions of miles thus reducing replacement costs compared to a gasoline engine over the same stretch.

Secondly, your statement regarding diesel fuel costs is mostly irrelevant since the price spikes are hardly common and historical data shows diesel to be priced competitively to gasoline in the long-run. A short-term large price discrepancy is largely anecdotal and hardly proves what should be expected in the future.

Not to mention that I'm curious where you are from since in my area diesel is rivaling the price of Premium gasoline in most areas(under $2/gal) and even nationally is only about 16cents higher than regular gasoline($2.08/gal vs. $1.93/gal. from http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pri_gnd_dcus_nus_w.htm). Far less than the $1/gal you claim and well within the range of making diesel a good economic choice compared to gasoline.

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your kidding whilst eco friendly its not safety friendly cars do age and as they do the body and chassis suffers on going stress eventually they lose structural integrity.is thing is 28 years old it should have been recycled eighteen years ago.

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All my Volkswagens have gone through my torturous ownership and all performed well and went on to new owners who drove them for a long time. My vanagon syncro is 23 years old and I trust it with my life. I ride motorcycels, snowboard jumping off cliffs and mountain bike hard. Safety? Don't be such a wuss. This type of project is not for everyone so don't worry it is not going to be a pandemic problem of mass death from people driving light weight cars from the past. Until the car companies can do something about the bloated weight of todays cars we can only use what we have.

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Diesels do not tolerate lugging? What planet is that true on?

A redline of 4500rpm, ideally used in low-rpm torque intensive applications, peak torque at 1,300rpm. A design of motor that is FAMOUS for lugging. As someone who's owned several diesels, and worked on them, I can tell you that you're flat out wrong.

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Well,JJ.
You sound as if You are convinced that lugging a diesel engine is not harmful in the slightest.
Lug away and wrap that mother out if You desire.
I'm not selling a thing but then neither am I buying,so Happy Motoring!

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What they are doing hardly consistutes lugging. I think you are confused by the term lugging and what it actually means. It really has far more to do with driver operation and choosing a gear that's too high for the given task.

Just simply choosing higher ratios than stock for a transmission will not automatically cause that engine to be lugged. Provided the chosen ratios are not massively different such as replacing the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd gears in a car with the 4th, 5th, and 6th gears from that car. In such a case, trying to drive the car around(particularly just getting it up to a moderate speed) would be a chore and would likely cause the engine to lug quite often due to being in too high a gear virtually all the time. But, that's an extreme circumstance and not even remotely comparable to what is going on here.

For one, they are using the tranmsission from another TDI model, one which uses the same 1.9L engine as the '03 models as well. VW's engineers sure felt it fine to offer their 1998 TDI's with that transmission and didn't consider it as lugging the engine.

Additionally, the car that this engine/tranny combo is going into is much, much lighter than either a 1998 or 2003 TDI, so I really doubt the car will be working much harder utilizing the taller gear ratios they have chosen for the car.

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I also found a few links to help explain lugging to those who might not understand what it is. Also note that neither link mentions anything about the chosen ratios in a transmission being too tall, just the driver choosing a gear that's too high.

In other words, in virtually all cases(except extreme circumstances like my example above), lugging can be solved by simply downshifting to a lower gear.

Both links reference The "Car Talk" guys Tom and Ray, but I think they give a good explanation of things in laymen's terms.

http://www.cartalk.com/content/columns/Archive/2005/August/07.html
http://www.cartalk.com/content/columns/Archive/2008/November/02.html

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