As penitence for your hyperbole, thou must travel to Austin, Minnesota. Once there, thou must throw oneself on the steps of the Spam Museum, and beg forgiveness from the Makers at Hormel. Do not return until thou hast fully grokked the wonder that is Spam.

A proper sport sedan turbo diesel is nearly just as fast as their gasoline powered cousins. Nearly means no difference in day to day use. The only difference is on the track where they are a second or so slower.

Smells like a Mack truck? A modern diesel sedan -not the F-250 – smells like – nothing really. They certainly don’t smell any worse than a modern gasoline car that is slightly over rich during accerlation… Those gas cars smell like gun powder or lacquer thinner or I don’t know what.

Drives like a Mack truck? Again I think the F-250 must be on your mind b/c a diesel has tons of torque and REALLY nice to drive in traffic. Light throttle, lower rpms, etc. More power to me than their gasoline cousins b/c they don’t have to be revved to the moon for power (thinking of my Honda four cylinder here – and I like it too).

The worst of the breed is certainly all of the things you describe (Olds diesel, hot rod diesel pickups with the fuel turned up for power, smokey dump trucks, tractors at the tractor pulls) but the best of the breed (even average examples of the breed) are far from that today.

The only problem I see with diesels is that $3.89 per gallon price that I saw today. For my needs though (occasional use only vehicles of the large variety) diesel still would be my choice vehicle for out of town traffic. Small cars for commuting, large van for family trips.

Imagine a big VW Eurovan turbo diesel camper van getting 30-31 miles per gallon instead of the more typical minivan average of 18-20 mpg for their gasoline cousins. That would nice. A little more expensive in the short term but less fuel burned and for me and my family’s priorities – that is important.

If “No one wants to drive…”, then who are you talking to? Does “no one” mean 1% or less where you come from?

If that’s the best argument you can make, perhaps you should stay on the porch.

Even if you somehow come away from experience with a good diesel like the 530, what makes you think that next year they won’t make an even better one? Do you have some magic crystal ball that tells you that gas cars are always going to be better? If so, sell it on eBay because it’s wrong.

The smooth power and acceleration of the 530 was superior to the gas version and got much better mileage. In city driving, I would much prefer the diesel. I am have bought 3 BMW’s. I would strongly prefer the diesel.

Those of you arguing from ignorance need to learn a lesson. Those of you who simply don’t like diesels should realize that there are many who do, and more who would if they were a bit enlightened. Yes, there are always going to be a lot of people who don’t like them, maybe even a majority, but SO WHAT? That doesn’t mean you can’t sell millions of them.

Meh…

I’ll share my diesel particulate affected Dutch knowledge with you;

Diesel powered cars are taxed (even) heavier in the Netherlands than gasoline cars but at the same time diesel fuel is still considerably cheaper than gasoline (Euro 95 1.44 Euro/liter; diesel 1.22 Euro/liter –> ecotaxes going on for decades). This means effectively, because diesel cars get higher mileage and the fuel per liter costs less, that the more you drive per year (with the same car) the more cost effective diesel is, the break even point is considered at approximately 20-25k kilometers (about 12.5-16k miles) driven per year.

This means that in The Netherlands the percentage of diesel cars is about 30% of the total Dutch market car market. This is a relatively small percentage compared to other Euro countries, most are around 50, and Austria is at higher than 80% (because, without extra taxes on diesel it doesn’t make sense at all to buy gasoline powered cars, except for enthousiasts).

However, diesel cars sold in the Netherlands are usually company cars and obviously they cover a lot of distance (a lot a lot). Therefore the total distance covered with diesels compared to petrol is not quite clear compared to other countries.

Mostly all taxes on cars in the Netherlands are just for tax revenue and to even further compensate for income differences, and those on diesel are no different.

Situations 3 and 4 (placebo effect) are taken care of by using a double-blind methodology. They put control subjects in the same “exposure chamber” and tell them the same thing as the others, but don’t expose them to the fumes. (In this experiment, I think they told them all they were being fumed.)
Then the difference between the two groups is due only to diesel, not to trapped-in-a-room anxiety.

Starting on page 8 of the PDF, they admit the issue you described in situation 1 (and 2 is the same) and give several reasons why it’s not likely an issue.
Mostly, it smelled like diesel for both groups.
Also, the difference in brain activity happened before the subjects complained about the smell.

Scientists are not so stupid as to not consider this stuff.

Yet another study designed to boogey diesel use and keep all the wonderful oil burners out of the US.

The study was Dutch, not American, and, of course, in Europe, diesel automotives are common.

Unfortunately, as long as the fuel price disparity is as big as it is now, it’s going to be an extremely hard sell, even for a current diesel owner and enthusiast like myself. (I was waiting for the VW Jetta TDI Sportwagen, but my dad has kinda turned me on to the idea of getting a Passat 2.0T longroof instead. Lord knows the price will be about the same, if not lower as the initial “market adjustment” pandemic hits the TDIs…unless the price difference means they’ll actually debut with cash on the hood…Argh, now my head hurts!)

Top Gear did an interesting comparison of the Diesel and Gas BMWs recently:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7maXP3ShXs&feature=related

The one point that they made (it is not on the clip) is that while it was slightly slower than the gas version, it set a record for lowest fuel consumption on the track.

As the owner of a 2006 Jeep Liberty CRD I’m a big diesel fan. I get 23-25mpg out of a 4200lb SUV. The buckets of low end torque let me scoot around town, over 55-60 it gets a bit anemic.

The 2007 emissions regulations for Diesel drastically reduce the amount of pollution. So much than even the CA Air Resources Board has come out in favor of the new post 07 diesels.

As some one who operates a 2007 Class 8 (International RoadStar) on a daily basis it is like night and day on the pollution versus an older tractor.

Europe (for the time being) has less stringent regulations on diesel emissions.

I paid a bunch for the combination catalyst-muffler-particulate filter hanging under my truck and I periodically burn some extra fuel whenever it goes into the automatic filter clean cycle. The fancy venturi built into my tailpipe is there to reduce the exhaust temperature so as to prevent burning the hair off pedestrians legs when the cleaning cycle is running.

GS650G… OK, but… why would the Dutch want to keep diesels out of the US?

I think they want them out of Europe too.

But they should study the “calming” effects of Christian music and road rage. I can’t curse at the guy in the pick-up when I’m praising Jesus!

“You A-hole! God Bless!”

And to think I get yelled at for wasting taxpayer money to go test drive Aston Martins……

Busbodger says:
Funny how there is this double standard… We can have millions of heavy trucks belching huge quantities of diesel smoke but the idea of having a few diesel cars that are much more efficient than their gasoline cousins is terrible!!!

That is so true. California is to blame for that bizarro situation.

Tell you what, bring me over one of those TDI TT Convertibles, or an Alfa Spider with the JTDM engine and I’ll happily be your Diesel brains study lab rat.

–chuck
http://chuck.goolsbee.org

Diesel is fine in what we use heavy trucks for, but they do not make good engines for mainstream cars in our country. Not that we’ll ever embrace them anyways considering all of diesels real world drawbacks in an automobile.