Seat León FR TDI: heaps of diesel power without the VW price
If you think that the Volkswagen Golf GTD is a tad expensive, take a look at the León FR TDI. VW's Spanish company, Seat, offers most of the Golf GTD's package, including the same engine, a 2.0-liter unit able to produce 170hp, at a slightly lower price. The sad part is that this engine, fitted with common-rail diesel technology, is the only one in the León line-up that is currently Euro V compliant. In the León FR TDI, drivers get performance along with a few benefits at the pump: when packed together with the dual clutch DSG gearbox, the León manages the same performances as the Golf: 0 to 100 km/h (62 mph) in 8.2 seconds. On the EU combined test cycle, the FR TDi gets 5.3 l/100 km (44.4 mpg U.S.) with CO2 emissions of 139 g/km.
[Source: Auto News]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Matt 8:43AM (4/07/2009)
Um, yes please!
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Steve-O 11:43AM (4/07/2009)
Envy is a bad emotion. However, I sure am envious of all the great DIESEL options the europeans have.
Those Jetta TDIs are selling out at sticker over here and STILL companies who produse diesels for that part of the world will NOT do them here, and we have no choices.
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jharlan 1:37PM (4/07/2009)
Matt & Steve:
I have been pounding on this, and I think there is overwhelming demand for these modern turbo diesels because they are just superior to gasoline engines. Who could argue with smaller engines with more usable power, much more fuel economy, less emissions, and longer engine life. It's a no brainer. What the hell is the problem here. It has to be a conspiracy to keep us burning more imported oil, and quite frankly I would have to call it corruption.
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Swede 7:27PM (4/07/2009)
You mean less oil ;)
I know one part of the conspiracy, I call it "George". There may be others left.
tomstaple 6:53AM (6/04/2009)
The problem is they would have to build new engine fab facilities, because there are already supply / demand problems, especially for the VAG products, in Europe, including the excellent 1.4 TSI engines (both in standard single turbo and twin-charger form) to the extent that having launched the Golf with the low output TSI lump they then had to revert to the aging unwanted 1.6 FSI for a while much to customers protestations because they simply couldn't build enough TSI's...
Same goes with the new common rail TDI units - demand across the VAG group (VW, Audi, Seat, Skoda in europe) is vast.
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