Edmunds dealer partner, Bayway Leasing, is now offering transparent lease deals via these forums. Click here to see May lease deals!
Options
What Would It Take for YOU to buy a diesel car?
This discussion has been closed.
Popular New Cars
Popular Used Sedans
Popular Used SUVs
Popular Used Pickup Trucks
Popular Used Hatchbacks
Popular Used Minivans
Popular Used Coupes
Popular Used Wagons
Comments
Oh really? I had an air-cooled '75 Westfalia, and that thing hardly ever ran, even back when it was new. I can't count the number of times that thing stranded us on road trips. Main problems were the absolutely abysmal fuel injection, which was so bad VW went back to carburetion for a couple of years around 1977, and a phenomenon that all air-cooled VWs demonstrated where it would gradually reach the point where even flooring the pedal wouldn't cause it to rev any more. I wish I could remember the name for that. You had to turn it off and let it cool for an hour or two, then it would run normally for a while again.
It is truly amazing, indeed perhaps a good topic for some type of research paper, that VW has such a dedicated (albeit small) fan club. People love those old vans, yet they were a total underpowered PITA, and that's when they WERE running, which wasn't all that often!
If GM deserves all the hardship it is going through right now for the 25 years of crap it produced, VW doesn't deserve to ever have another customer again. Their crap was way worse, and for way longer. I guess the difference was, they made CUTE crap.
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
VW is not real popular in this country, but they are the third largest auto company in the world, and projected to be bigger than GM. They have not sold here like they do in Europe, China, and South America, due much more to product mix more than reputation. While everyone else was selling trucks and SUVs like hotcakes, VW did not offer much of that product mix until very recently. Consequently, their sales have not deteriorated as much as companies (even Toyota) which developed a reliance on gas hogs.
VW was the first to put a high quality interior with great tactile feel and damped operation of handles and hinges on their least expeneive products. A 99 new Golf had way more content and equipment than its competition. Perhaps that emphasis took precedence over simple and reliable, I don't know. As I have said, my VW ownership experience has been good.
That said, I have had some very reliable Fords too, and I'd love a shot at the new Fiesta diesel just being introduced in Europe. And the range of Volvo diesels planned as well. I do see why manufacturers are reluctant to bring their wildly successful clean diesels here: most Americans don't want them and this discussion tends to back that up.
Diesel cars will never sell well in this environment.
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
I agree with Gregg about the interior materials. Our '02 Passat had an interior every bit as nice as the BMW with which we replaced it. The Passat's interior was far nicer than the '05 G35 I later owned. When those new VWs came out in the late '90s, I was hoping the reliability would improve with the quality. It didn't. But at least you could have a nice interior to sit in when your car broke down.
As for the '76 Rabbit, I think you were really lucky. You can probably find 10 horror stories for every one of yours.
As for diesel fuel cost, even at 25% more, you are still ahead. I get 50 mpg overall with my TDI. The equivalent gasser might do 28. And I pay no more than $4 for diesel here.
So in that face-off, I would go for the Matrix. And certainly there are a number of similar face-offs I could propose that would have a similar outcome.
Will someone produce a Jetta-sized diesel car that pulls an average 60 mpg combined? Then we would be getting somewhere...
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
So yeah, you were incredibly lucky it seems. The Rabbit probably did more to ruin VW's reputation than any other product, IMO, except maybe the Dasher and the 411/412 debacle.
No complaints about build quality and driving abilities though. I like both of those things about VW.
10year, 300,000 mile durability (at least)
good rust protection and a robust suspension (they salt in the winter, and spray calcium chloride on my dirt road in the summer)
600mile range
I want the same stellar fuel efficiency, but double the fuel economy: 42mpg
Cars I'm interested in are Jetta SportWagen TDI, Mitsubishi Lancer diesel, Subaru diesel, really any car in the 3000-3500 pound weight range with a diesel would meet most of my requirements, I think, if only they were offered here.
Heh, I had a 1976 Dasher. Every cent (and more) saved on gas was dumped into repairs. The fuel injection system was pretty unreliable, prone to breaking, and difficult to find mechanics that coule/would work on it and/or fix it.
It took more than ten years before I would look at another VW. Now, our '87 Golf was pretty good. But we only got a 110K miles out of it due to two pretty good collisions.
Skip another 10 years, and I'm in a '03 gasser Passat wagon. It's been pretty good (knock on wood), but I spend a lot more on maintenance on it than any car I've recently owned. Frankly, what sold me on it was its very high safety rating, good fuel economy (especially for the time), and my desire for a wagon. Gotta say, though, if Honda had continued to build an Accord wagon, I would have bought it over the Passat.
Still, I'm interested in the Jetta Sportwagen TDI, so when it's out, I'll have a good hard look at it. Then I'm going to go talk to the service guys and see what maintenance would set me back.
You had an 87 Golf that went 110K before being ruined by accidents, and you have an 03 with high maintenance costs, but no notable problems. So go to someone else. There are lots of reliable VW mechanics out there who fix and maintain them better--and charge far less--than the dealer does. Once the free maintenance and warranty is done, I am done with them as well. Five times to fix what turned out to be a simple and obvious leak, that they likely caused with previous sloppy warranty work..don't get me started (oh, yeah, I already did...sorry ). Anyway, the point is save yourself some dough and find a good mechanic.
Then I checked base model cars for Mercedes, Audi and BMW for 2006/2007
Mercedes was average, BMW above average, Audi below average.
So as of 2007 anyway, nothing seems to have changed yet at VW/Audi.
Even if we didn't believe the ratings, which we are entitled to do, this type of PR doesn't help the company's image very much.
This doesn't "scare" me but it gives me the incentive to dig into the issue further, like I did with the MINIs "bad ratings". (they turned out to be early model blues that later improved quite a bit).
Mostly, I've dusted off my old tools, bought a manual, joined a bunch of forums and have started doing my own work again. Brakes, tuneups, etc are now all on my time (unfortunately, I don't have a lot of free time any more).
We are still feeling the effects of GMs huge blunder and diesel units will continue under some sort of cloud as long as our brains are not reprogrammed by the government.
JMHO
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
Was scanning this thread, and not sure if this was covered. We have an 09 TDI on order. There is a $1300 tax credit for the TDI, that makes the price difference only 700. The real world mileage difference between the gas and diesel Jetta is well over 50%, and there is about a 20% premium for Diesel here on the East coast. That makes the pay back on the Diesel well under two years if you drive 15K miles a year or more. In addition, the Diesel engine should last longer and have a higher resale value. So if your looking at a Jetta, this is a no brainer, IMHO.
People keep comparing the Jetta to Hybrids. The Hybrids get good mileage, BUT, the Prius is not as big as the Jetta, and at some point you ARE going to need new batteries if you keep the car past three or four years. Those batteries are going to cost you 2 to 4K to replace.
If you are a driving enthusiast, the Jetta drives and handles much better then the Prius and other small hybrids.
We're rolling the dice on VW quality. The fact that they cut the warranty by a year is a little disconcerting, but scheduled maintenance is now included for the first three years, so our costs will be pretty well known for the first 36 months. In addition , you can burn up to 5% Bio-diesel.
I think in three more years there will be better alternatives, but for something you can buy today, the Jetta seems to have a good combination of features.
Cheers!
You said, "The Hybrids get good mileage, BUT, the Prius is not as big as the Jetta, and at some point you ARE going to need new batteries if you keep the car past three or four years. Those batteries are going to cost you 2 to 4K to replace."
The Prius is considered a "midsize" car. I don't know specifically how large the interior dimensions are in the Jetta, but my guess is that it's not much larger than the Prius in the areas which matter, if it is larger at ALL.
Secondly, where did you read or who told you that hybrid batteries last only three to four years? That is completely incorrect. There are many 2001 Priuses with original batteries and they are performing fine. Ed Begley Jr has one. The rate of hybrid battery failures is incredibly low.
Be a diesel fan, but if you are arguing against hybrids as comparison vehicles, at least have your facts straight.
I've always heard that battery life was projected to be seven years.
Ed Begley is a moron.
The next Prius will use Lipos. Lipos are superior from a power to weight ratio, but they are also more prone to failure, cost more, and wear out faster. The Prius does not have the overall performance of the Jetta, though may be more reliable as it is a Toyota.
The Prius is larger then it looks, but you can get a Jetta Wagon, not an option from Toyota.
Ed Begley has a lot of things, but he's not a person I seek to emulate. I'm not buying a car TO BE Green. I buying a car based on it's overall merits, of which fuel economy is just one factor. Both the Prius and the Jetta Diesel pull about the same amount of oil from the ground, but the Jetta has no batteries to maintain and discard. The environmental impact of making and recycling these batteries is not insignificant, and if you keep the car for long, you WILL be replacing the batteries, I can guarantee it.
Be that as it may, choice is good.
Cheers!
While you are quite correct, over time the batteries will degrade, my opinion is that the car might degrade before or at the same time that the batteries do. After all, good engineering is when everything is designed to fall apart together. Otherwise you'd have thousands of junk Priuses with perfectly usuable batteries rotting away in them. I think Toyota tested the batteries to mileage, not to time (since they couldn't, obviously), and they seem capable of surviving well into the 200K range.
Regarding interior room, I was curious about that so I looked it up and the Prius actually has more interior room for passengers but a little less luggage capacity. So the Prius is roomier, but not by a grand amount by any means.
Just like jesusfreak, I am a little concerned that when the Prius goes to Li-Ion batteries the long-term durability of the battery pack will decrease, but that is why Toyota has already annaounced that the redesigned 2010 Prius will continue to use NiMH batteries for now. My hope is that Toyota will demand that Li-Ion batteries, when they start to use them, will have the same durability as the NiMHs they have been using up until then.
The difference in quality of the drive between these two is dramatic, with the Prius taking the Camry approach and the Jetta taking the "German driver's car" approach.
But what is frustrating is that all this [non-permissible content removed] for tat occurs between the two camps because we have no options on either side. I guess we could include Civic hybrid in that camp, but it's still just two models vs one. We need MORE diesels and MORE small, high-mileage hybrids available to make this a more informed discussion.
And if we could have a few small cars from these lousy automakers that just use small gas engines and get 40+ real-world mpg, we could have a real dialog!
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
I agree 100%
As for the "very green diesel" you mentioned, I am having a little trouble figuring out what that is, exactly?
The Jetta TDI is pretty green as it is.
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
so I guess I meant "a diesel that will out green a hybrid"
Not quite there yet.
I'm sorry, but 9 years is the MEDIAN age of registered cars, not the average--and it's been increasing somewhat the last few years.
However, keep in mind that the reason for this increase in the better durability of the cars, not the economic factors.
Shifty's original point would certainly apply equally to MY 2000 Priuses. Of course, while Toyota had already been selling Priuses for several years in Japan in the year 2000, there was no MY '00 Prius available in the U.S. '01 was the first year of U.S. sales.
bobgwtw: parity may be approaching in other parts of the country, but in northern California it is RECEDING: regular unleaded is dropping a penny at a time while diesel stands firm. The differential today is a solid 25%. With the winter months approaching and the impact heating oil sales have on diesel supplies, I do not expect a substantial drop in diesel prices.
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
Diesel has almost touched the $4 benchmark around here btw. RUG was $3.85 the other day.
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
That makes the math work.
If VW has such a small fan club, how did they get to be the number three auto seller worldwide last month?
I admit that I have had some issues with VW service, but really no worse than my 82 Subaru that had to have the tranny rebuilt at 70K and my S10 that had a tranny rebuilt at 60K and my 97 windstar that had to have new brakes every year. The problem is not really with the cars but the idiots they get to run their service garages.
I'm not sure where your getting your information from. The prius is based on the Corolla platform, which is a compact car. The Edmund's website lists the Prius as a compact car. Put one next to a Jetta and they are about the same size. The only advantage to the Prius is the hatchback, which should make it easier to load and able to load more stuff in. I know that I can get more stuff in my 2000 Beetle than I can in my wife's 05 Corolla.
The real differnce in the hybrid versus diesel comes down to how and where you drive. Lots of stop and go city driving? The hybrid will win out as long as the majority of the rest of your driving is under 40 mph. Any other type of driving? The diesel has the clear advantage.
I have also read a few comments about the VW engine noise. It is louder than the gas engine at idle, but put it on the highway and the diesel is much quieter. I am usually about 2500 rpm at 70-75. The gasser would be around 5500 rpm and whining like most small gas engines.
The Prius is classified as a mid-size sedan.
Googling the Prius as a Mid-Size car which it is
I'd have to guess that VW performs better in Europe due to better parts pricing and service outlets. Certainly many of the complaints that have dragged VW down in the USA are due to incompetence and poor organization.
Look at Renault in America. They actually OUTSOLD VW in the USA (I think 1959 and 1960) until people realized they couldn't get the cars serviced properly. It wasn't all the car's fault by any means.
As for get up and go on your Corolla, you just have to put your foot in it and hold it there. The engine will wake up. It's build lazy. That 1.8L Corolla is a really good engine and it delivers some amazing MPG. VW should be so lucky to build one as good IMO.