Save Diesel 'till You're Blue(Motion) In The Face

Cammy Corrigan
by Cammy Corrigan

Say what you want about the Prius (and no doubt you will) but it is a car that ushered in a new era of automotive history. It made saving fuel and being “green” trendy. When automotive history is written, the Toyota Prius will be along side cars like the Ford Model-T, The Citroen DS, the Jaguar E-Type and Audi Quattro. But now other car companies are fighting back. Toyota has the Prius, Ford has the Fusion hybrid, GM has the Volt and Volkswagen has the….Golf? Channel 4 reports that Volkswagen are launching the Golf Bluemotion and it wants your attention. For those who like figures (and I don’t mean the Jill Wagner type) here are some salient points for you to chew over:Average fuel consumption of 74.3mpg [Ed:imp. gallons, European cycle… not an apples-to-apples with EPA numbers]Emissions of 99gm/km (which makes it road tax exempt in the UK. A very good selling point.)Maximum torque of 184ft-lb at 1500rpm.Top speed of 118mph103bhp engine.OK so it isn’t going to win any drag races, but it might win some hypermiling rallies. These are highly impressive figures, but let us remember, 5th Gear’s test of the Volkswagen Bluemotion Polo where VW claimed it could get 70+mpg in mixed driving conditions, but 5th Gear could only achieve 46mpg. Also, Toyota aren’t just going to hand their “green crown” over to the Wolfsburg Warriors. Toyota are building their new Auris hybrid in the UK. It aims to have sub 100gm/km (meaning it’ll be road tax exempt in the UK) and because it’ll be smaller and lighter than the Toyota Prius, it should meet or beat the fuel consumption figures of Toyota’s halo car (72.4 mpg [Ed: same caveats]). It’s nice to see that the green race is producing more efficient cars, but it has also, inadvertently, brought up another problem. Which am I going to die of, if I carry on living in Europe? Diesel smog? Or Nickel poisoning?

Cammy Corrigan
Cammy Corrigan

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  • ZekeToronto ZekeToronto on Oct 30, 2009

    McDuck: True, but that would require me to think in terms of "consumption" instead of "range" ... and like I said I have some kind of mental block in that area ;-) Maybe the growing influence of electric vehicles will encourage metric countries to think more in terms of range too. After all, "a full charge can take you 300 kms" also seems more meaningful than "25kW hours/100kms"!

  • Accs Accs on Nov 01, 2009

    See... what bother me is.. This is old news. Only the germans have been putting time and money into diesel to make it work. The Japanese have given up on trying to produce / bring over the CTDi Civic and or Accord to the US.. And the Americans, who ONLY follow in the majority of fuel economy advances.. WONT even TOUCH deisel in the U.S until the Japanese make it mainstream. Meanwhile.. Everyone has a diesel in the U.K (and the rest of the world), and everyone is getting by on mostly sub-2ltr motors, while the U.S just screws around by throwing buckets of money into the hybrid pit.. What a bunch of crap.

  • Lorenzo Heh. The major powers, military or economic, set up these regulators for the smaller countries - the big guys do what they want, and always have. Are the Chinese that unaware?
  • Lorenzo The original 4-Runner, by its very name, promised something different in the future. What happened?
  • Lorenzo At my age, excitement is dangerous. one thing to note: the older models being displayed are more stylish than their current versions, and the old Subaru Forester looks more utilitarian than the current version. I thought the annual model change was dead.
  • Lorenzo Well, it was never an off-roader, much less a military vehicle, so let the people with too much money play make believe.
  • EBFlex The best gift would have been a huge bonfire of all the fak mustangs in inventory and shutting down the factory that makes them.Heck, nobody would even have to risk life and limb starting the fire, just park em close together and wait for the super environmentally friendly EV fire to commence.
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