RE: GMI have been hearing a lot of hype about the auto manufacturers with their huge plans to produce diesel cars… in short; I find it to be nothing less than stunning stupidity, and at the same time, quite humourous.
I bought a diesel Beetle in 1999 with the intent of driving it well over 500,000 km… the car never made 20,000 kms before it was in the shop. For the remainder of the time that I owned it, it spent more time in the shop than on the road… it got to the point that I had to get a lawyer to make VW honour their own warranty, they didn’t want it back in the shop because they didn’t even know what was wrong with it. After the lawyer sent the letter they decided that they would “have one last took at it”, and suddenly the car ran reasonably well; for a time. By the time the car had 80,000 kms on it, it was costing me $1,000.00 a month to keep it on the road…
Bottom line: I bought the car because diesel was $0.85 a liter and gas was something like $0.97. Now diesel is more than gasoline and they think that people are going to buy cars with diesel engines when gasoline cars can get the same or better gas mileage than the diesel cars!?... Personally, I don’t think so… add to that: what you can fix for $10s and $20s on a gas engine will cost you $50s and $100s on a diesel engine… AND try to find someone outside of the dealership who can repair it!…
The problem “so I’ve heard” was that the North American diesel is too dirty for the VW engines, and it plugs them up. This makes sense because they took the head off of my car twice (If I remember correctly) and cleaned the carbon out of the ports. Now with a HPDI LNG diesel combustion engine, you would not have that problem; but I would not hold my breath waiting for that to come on the market…
I also heard that they had to de-tune the diesel engine to make emission standards in Canada and the fuel economy dropped drastically because of it; but this is all conjecture and to be honest, I would never recommend anyone ever buy a VW anything.
If GM goes this route, I think it will be the final nail in their coffin; but I think the writing is on the wall for the “big three” anyway…