All about cars - very interesting

[dieseltaylor]

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/rob-magazine/dear-detroit/article1343879/

1. SEIZE THE ELECTRIC CAR Ford Motor Co. has taken a hard line against bringing alternative energy vehicles such as plug-in electrics to market—until recently, that is. Although Ford marketed the Ranger electric vehicle in the 1990s to conform with California alternative-energy regulations, and later launched the Escape Hybrid SUV, the company maintained it wouldn’t develop new vehicles until a proven demand existed. “If customers aren’t buying them, we’re not making them,” proclaimed Ford’s senior manager of energy storage, Ted Miller, to a reporter in 2008.

But soon, gas prices spiked, customer demand for electric options grew, and Ford watched as General Motors won attention for its Chevy Volt, due out in 2010. Now Ford was too far behind to catch up: Thanks to the Gogolian bureaucracy that ensnarls North American vehicle manufacturers, a typical product development cycle is four to five years.

Fortunately for Ford, Magna founder Frank Stronach and his design staff came to the rescue. Stronach had discussed the market potential of electric vehicles with his executive VP of new product creation, Ted Robertson, in January, 2008. Six months later, with help from Magna’s R&D budget for things electric, Robertson shipped a working EV prototype to the company’s Ontario headquarters.

“Great,” Stronach said, staring at what appeared to be a typical Ford Focus. “What is it?”

“It’s your electric car,” Robertson said.

Robertson’s team had placed an electric drivetrain in a Ford Focus for no other reason than it was convenient—the engine compartment and trunk size had the right dimensions. But the test drives went so well (for this writer’s review, see below) that Stronach suggested approaching the automaker for an unconventional partnership. “I want you to go show this to Ford,” said the auto parts magnate. “Tell them we want to get into the electric car business. Are they interested?”

Magna’s timing was good: Robertson approached Ford just as it was reconsidering plug-in electrics. Forced into the unusual position of playing catch-up, Ford’s engineering staff realized a Magna-engineered Focus would enable them to get an all-electric vehicle on the market soon after the Volt’s debut. The company introduced its BEV (battery electric vehicle) model at the 2009 Detroit Auto Show—barely a year after Stronach first mentioned the idea to Robertson.

“The Ford-Magna deal would never have been done 10 years ago,” says Ron Cogan, editor and publisher of Green Car Journal. “Granted, it was a case of exceptional timing and initiative on Magna’s part. Serendipity exists—but then again, in any other time, Ford wouldn’t have been so open to Magna’s approach. It’s a unique time in the auto industry.”

The bankruptcies of Chrysler and GM, and the difficult climate over all, have made the Detroit Three more open to new ideas than ever before, Cogan says. He compares the Ford-Magna arrangement to Daimler AG’s purchase of a 10% stake in electric pioneer Tesla Motors, announced in May for a reported double-digit million-euro sum. That deal, too, was an example of an established auto manufacturer acknowledging that superior expertise existed outside its own walls.

2. BE OPEN SOURCE

In Detroit, the development of a new vehicle has traditionally been a secretive, top-down process. An executive issues a directive to a corps of designers and engineers, who huddle in high-security facilities as they develop the thousands of elements that constitute a prototype, which is only unveiled to the public once it’s been exhaustively test-driven and refined.

Jay Rogers wants to demolish that model. Through his company, Local Motors, of Wareham, Massachusetts, the former U.S. marine captain and Harvard Business School grad is attempting to apply open-source business theory to carmaking.

The open-source philosophy gained mainstream prominence in the 1990s with such free software programs as the Linux computer operating system and the Mozilla project, which grew into Firefox—now the second-most popular Web browser after Internet Explorer. Writing code for the programs, like any open-source task, was the work of a community of volunteers who collaborated transparently, with the help of online message boards. The approach has since been applied to disciplines as varied as encyclopedia-writing (Wikipedia) and clothing design (the Chicago-based company Threadless).

“Local Motors is a quantum leap past these iterations,” says Karim Lakhani, an assistant professor at Harvard Business School who specializes in studying open-source communities; he’s also a member of the Local Motors strategic advisory board. “No one has ever used the open-source model in a sector where the barrier to entry is so high.”

Here’s how it works: Local Motors stages contests that challenge volunteers to design facets of a specific vehicle (prizes range from a few hundred dollars to $10,000). A network of auto design students and moonlighting engineers post their ideas to the company website, where they’re judged and voted on. The best and most popular elements are incorporated into the design.

There is a “green” element to all this, but it’s not immediately evident from the company’s debut vehicle, a burly off-road racer called the Rally Fighter. First conceptualized by Sangho Kim, who now works for Subaru in Japan, the model gets much better fuel mileage than comparable vehicles. (The Local Motors pipeline includes some explicitly green models like the electric Boston Bullet.)

Since the design work in the Local Motors model focuses on aesthetics and the particular needs of the model at hand, most parts are sourced from conventional suppliers—the Rally Fighter’s engine, for example, is a diesel-powered 3.0 litre BMW 335d with the sort of specs that activate the salivary glands of adrenalin addicts: 265 horsepower on a suspension system with 18 inches of vertical tire movement. The prototype is slated for its first tests in November.

Rogers says the company caters to the same customization trend that made hits of the Mini and Toyota Scion. “When you drive down the road in a Ford Taurus, people’s heads don’t turn,” says Rogers. “Great design turns heads. We’re trying to create head turners.”

On one level, Local Motors hearkens back to the glory days of Fifties hot rods and grease monkeys, when significantly more drivers knew their carburetor from their alternator. Only 3,000 Local Motors Rally Fighters will be built, with the majority of manufacturing slated to begin next June at a micro-factory in Phoenix. Another innovation? About 60 hours worth of the final assembly will be conducted by the vehicle’s owner, operating under the guidance of factory staff.

Will the company ever appeal to a wider audience than car hobbyists? Rogers hopes so, drawing comparisons between his company and the way Michael Dell popularized extreme customization of personal computers. On another level, it doesn’t matter. The open-source nature of Rogers’s product development cycle means his break-even point is only 200 vehicles per model. His ultimate goal is to persuade better-established automakers to open up their R&D cycles, which he thinks is bound to create more efficient vehicles in a more sustainable way. “I’m not in this to be a gazillionaire,” says Rogers. “I do want to make a profit. But more importantly, I want to change the world.”

3. TAKE THE HASSLE OUT OF BUYING

What if shopping for a car were easy? What if you could go to a single storefront and test drive a half-dozen subcompacts made by different manufacturers? And what if you didn’t have to negotiate with Larry, the commission-hungry salesman? What if the listed price was the amount you paid, end of story?

That last part isn’t a new idea: Back in 1985, it was one of the founding principles of Saturn LLC, established as a pseudo-independent arm of General Motors to combat incursions into North America by Japanese and German automakers. Saturn dealerships were supposed to be on the side of the buyer. They didn’t try to upsell; they didn’t bargain. The unusual strategy helped to create a fanatically devoted community of Saturn owners.

Problem was, GM didn’t do enough to provide those Saturn owners with new vehicles to buy. So, with Saturn poised to evaporate in the wake of the great industry shakeout of 2009, billionaire Roger Penske, the former race car driver and turnaround specialist, went after the Detroit brand. His plan? Quit manufacturing, period—offload it. Instead, use the Saturn dealership network to sell cars built by a variety of manufacturers, including brands from China and India. Call it the auto version of cosmetics retailer Sephora.

The idea made a certain amount of sense. Anyone who has ever bought a car knows it’s a painfully slow process, requiring visits to a half-dozen or so different dealerships, where each salesperson attempts to engage the customer in time-wasting negotiations. Penske’s idea was an audacious move in the right direction. Perhaps too audacious—the deal collapsed in late September, days before closing, after Penske failed to find anyone to build Saturn vehicles for him.

Still, there is at least one other sign that Detroit is changing the way it sells cars. In August, GM mounted a pilot project to sell its cars through eBay. With 225 of California’s 250 GM dealers participating, the automaker allowed prospective customers to bid on new vehicles at such mini-sites as gm.ebay.com and chevy.ebay.com. Although the websites attracted 960,000 searches during the first week, sales were lukewarm: Only 45 cars sold over the first nine days. It turned out that consumers were using the sites to educate themselves, then heading into a dealership for a test drive.

So, the conventional dealership isn’t dead yet—much to the relief of North American automakers. “If Walmart existed in 1900, then maybe we’d all be buying our cars at a big-box store,” says auto consultant Dennis DesRosiers. “But they didn’t, and the manufacturers invested in these dealership networks, and now they’re forced to protect them.” Anti-trust laws and dealer-manufacturer agreements also make it difficult for manufacturers to experiment with new retail outlets, which inevitably compete with existing dealerships. For the time being at least, we’re pretty much stuck with Larry.

4. DON'T GIVE UP ON GAS

The internal combustion engine gets a lot of flak from the new, “green” Detroit. Critics want to bolster its fuel efficiency by coupling it with an electric engine, à la hybrid vehicles like the Toyota Prius. Or they want to scrap it altogether and rely on all-electric vehicles.

But what if gas is getting a bad rap? Some automotive engineers believe the problem isn’t gas engines—it’s that Detroit executives didn’t prioritize R&D that could have produced ultra-efficient gas-driven vehicles.

Take a company like suburban Detroit’s EcoMotors, which has audaciously announced a goal of developing a vehicle that gets 160 kilometres per litre—by 2011, no less. The model they’re using makes the idea seem even more implausible: Its technology dates back to the 1930s.

The design employs an opposed piston/opposed cylinder engine, a concept that was pioneered by the German aircraft manufacturer Junkers & Co. during the Nazi regime. Conventional auto engines have vertical cylinders in which pistons push down on a crankshaft to create the rotations that power the car; the force is directed downward, and the design wastes a lot of energy on friction because the pistons travel relatively long distances. EcoMotors’ technology has horizontal cylinders with pistons on either end of the cylinder—two pistons per cylinder, with a single crankshaft between the cylinders. As a result, the pistons don’t have to travel nearly so far; more power goes to the crankshaft; and there’s a lot less friction.

The opposed piston/opposed cylinder engine hasn’t taken the world by storm previously because earlier designs used twin crankshafts, creating engines that were fussy and prone to break down. EcoMotors’ founder Peter Hofbauer’s decision to use only a single crankshaft makes the motor simpler and more reliable.

What does all that mean for non-gearheads? First, there are fewer of the nasty emissions that have earned diesel its bad reputation. Plus, EcoMotors’ engine is 30% lighter and provides 50% better mileage than comparable conventional engines. EcoMotors’ 2.5-litre engine will weigh 135 kilograms less than the 6.5-litre powerhouse used by truck manufacturers today—while providing the same amount of power. And with only a few small design tweaks, the engine can run on regular gasoline as well as alternatives like ethanol; it can also act as the gas power source in hybrid cars.

EcoMotors’ engine grew out of a fact some electric vehicle aficionados like to forget: Power density is a measure of the horsepower generated by a fuel source. Comparing similar weights of contemporary lithium-ion batteries (the standard in electric cars) to plain old gasoline, gas still generates more horsepower—by a factor of 100. “Batteries have made significant progress, but liquid fuel remains the medium we think most important,” says Don Runkle, EcoMotors’ CEO. He should know. As the former head of GM’s advanced engineering division, he was the executive who oversaw GM’s late, lamented EV-1.

Who’s paying for all this R&D? The design grew out of a research project conducted for the U.S. military by Hofbauer, who’s best known as the engineer who pioneered the diesel engine designs used today by Volkswagen. Once Hofbauer developed the prototype, Vinod Khosla, the Sun Microsystems co-founder turned hard-headed eco-investor, put up the venture capital; exactly how much capital, Runkle won’t say.

Khosla’s no dreamer. His unblinkered take on green technologies has caused him to slam hybrid vehicles as overly expensive; he’s looking for ultra-fuel efficiency that can play in China and India. Cheap, fuel-efficient and powerful—maybe these whiz kids can manage the tricky combo that’s so far eluded the rest of Detroit.

5. MAKE IT EASIER TO CHARGE IT

Electric cars can be unnerving. Forget to charge the battery and there’s a chance your morning commute could end at the side of the road. But what if you could stop into a station on your way to work and switch your near-dead battery for a charged one? And what if you could do it in less time than it takes to fill a conventional car’s gas tank?

That’s the proposition being marketed by the California-based company Better Place. Here’s how it works: In addition to a more extensive grid of plug-in “charge spots,” battery swap stations are scattered around cities the way gas stations are today. Drivers roll their rides into a garage bay, where automated machinery exchanges a weak battery for a fully charged one and, voila, your vehicle has another 160 kilometres of juice.

Under the Better Place model, the company owns, stores and maintains the batteries. Drivers purchase one of a variety of pay-as-you-go plans—a 500-km bundle, for instance.

Company spokesman Joe Paluska argues that the switchable battery model makes financial sense for consumers. Exclude the cost of a $15,000 lithium-ion battery, and the typical electric vehicle costs about the same as a diesel-powered one. And if governments subsidize electric vehicles, as they’ve indicated they will—the Ontario government, for example, has announced subsidies for buyers ranging from $4,000 to $10,000—then it’s possible that EVs with Better Place plans could have lower upfront purchase costs than their conventional counterparts.

Skeptics like Paul Scott, a vice-president at the educational non-profit organization Plug In America, call the model an attempt to apply gas-based thinking to the electric world. Scott points out that auto manufacturers would need to standardize their battery layout to accommodate the Better Place switching mechanism—something he doesn’t think is likely to happen. “If you know the auto industry, that’s just a non-starter. They can’t agree on anything,” he says. Drivers may also find the arrangement inconvenient, particularly since chargers that can restore a battery in less than an hour are expected to be available soon. Scott asks, “Why would you bother going to a charge station when you can just charge your vehicle at home?”

Still, the Better Place model is gaining momentum. The company has partnered with the Renault-Nissan alliance; Renault’s 2011 Fluence ZE electric vehicle will be sold in Denmark and Israel with a Better Place charging plan; and Better Place swap stations and charge spots are slated to begin operating next year in both countries. Closer to home, the company has teamed with Bullfrog Power, which will provide the electricity for charge spots in Ontario. As part of the planning process for the network, Better Place intends to open a demonstration centre in Toronto in 2010.

But the company’s biggest ambitions are in China, where market research suggests only 2% of the population own vehicles. “Our view is that China will skip conventional vehicles and move directly to electrics,” says Paluska. “Just like they skipped land lines for cellphones.”

Well, maybe. And maybe all those Chinese drivers will opt to charge their batteries themselves.

I am very impressed with the engine - seems unbelievable it has not been developed before - are their hidden problems?

[hoolaman]

If we (as in, the world) start to see serious CO2 emission limits, I wonder whether electric cars charged by coal-fired power stations will continue to be seen as green.

Probably ultra high efficiency fossil fuel or to a lesser extent, biofuel powered vehicles will be the way of the future.

[Michael Emrys]

If we (as in, the world) start to see serious CO2 emission limits, I wonder whether electric cars charged by coal-fired power stations will continue to be seen as green.

That's been on my mind all along. Plug-in electrics are just robbing Peter to pay Paul. To be seriously green, they are going to have to be fuel cell (or does fuel cell also emit carbon?), solar, or something else non-polluting.

Michael

[dieseltaylor]

Given the huge amount of solar energy hitting the earth daily I would hope that for countries with plenty of sun they would convert this to electricity for homes and cars.

For northern countries nuclear, wind and tidal.

Biomass is probably OK and gasification of waste also is a win win.

Hydrogen is probably best for long range -- but then a Tesla has just done 230? miles on one charge. Of course high tech expensive batteries might be the preserve of the wealthy and most people get around nicely on a vehicle with a lower range and cheaper cost.

[REVS]

Quote: "there are fewer of the nasty emissions that have earned diesel its bad reputation."

As a recent convert to Turbo Diesel engines, I've been reading up on their 'bad reputation' and, quite frankly, much of that criticism is way out of date. What might have been true in, say, 1995, no longer is true in 2009.

My car is a Citroen C4 turbo diesel. It's great on fuel of course (a recent country highway saw it use 5.0 litres per 100km, or 57mpg in the old money), in fact it's rated as slightly better on fuel than the Honda Civic Hybrid. And in CO2 emissions it's also very good 120g/km (compared with the 185g/km of my previous car, a petrol Mazda 3).

But the great thing about the diesel is the lack of soot, otherwise known as 'particulate matter' - the issue where the old diesel criticisms are now way out of date. My car produces 0.004g of particulate matter per km. Modern diesels have sophisticated and reliable particulate filters, coupled with other systems, which have virtually eliminated this problem. The Citroen's filter not only complies with the current Euro 4 standards but also the Euro 5 standard that comes into effect in 2012 and the proposed Euro 6 standard of 2015. Similarly, the new turbo diesels from VW, BMW, Audi and others are equally clean and efficient.

Sure, the final frontier for turbo diesels is the issue of nitrogen oxide emissions (NOx), but the old criticisms of dirty, noisy, slow, sooty diesels are way out of date.

As more than 50% of cars sold in Europe are now turbo diesels, I suspect they represent the practical, economical future of motoring. If you have driven a hybrid car you'll know that these anaemic machines offer very little driving pleasure and cost a packet to buy in the first place. By comparison, my turbo diesel has a stack of grunt and is quicker on-road than my previous Mazda. It's fun to drive, more fun than a petrol-powered car, and stacks more fun than a boring hybrid.

For a whole motoring population to make the switch from their petrol cars to some kind of more economical, cleaner alternative, whatever engine you offer had better not feel like a sluggish, boring-to-drive step backwards. Otherwise they just won't buy it.

[hoolaman]

That's been on my mind all along. Plug-in electrics are just robbing Peter to pay Paul. To be seriously green, they are going to have to be fuel cell (or does fuel cell also emit carbon?), solar, or something else non-polluting.

Michael

The problem (and its a big one) with fuel cells is where the hydrogen comes from. Currently it is mostly derived from fossil fuels anyway.

[gautrek]

. By comparison, my turbo diesel has a stack of grunt and is quicker on-road than my previous Mazda. It's fun to drive, more fun than a petrol-powered car, and stacks more fun than a boring hybrid.

No they are not mate.

I hate diesels.The fact you need how many gears to get any where.We are up to 7 gears now aren't we.The fact they have a power band of what 2000/3000 revs.The fact that you are comparing a turbo to a normal aspirated car.Why not try it against a turbo petrol for a fair comparison.Oh thats right petrol cars don't need a turbo unless they are stupidly fast sports cars.

Diesels are good on long journeys but around town you are changing gear every five foot.I drive 2lt Renault Laguna(the old shape) I can go from 10MPh up to 70 MPH in second gear(can you in a diesel).

I was late for work once and floored it away from some lights.I looked in my mirror and a Gold (TDI as i found out later) was up my chuff.So i just kept in second and floored it.He just about kept up with me but lost ground on every gear change.I lifted off at 70 and then dropped into 5th.

I will admit the new ones are awesome bits of kit.But i know 6 people who have had to have the turbos replaced on diesels.I will stick with my petrol thanks as i like having fun while driving.

[dieseltaylor]

I have had three diesels one after the other over the last 30 years and was very pleased with all of them. One of the neat ricks is that 4 up my 205 was still capable of pretty swift progress as the torque really is up to the job of moving weight.

My last, a 405 Turbo estate, I had for 13 years and that also had plenty of poke and never needed a new turbo or serious work. Very practical and economical cars. I have a sports car now, petrol driven and very fast, but acceleration from the lights hardly makes up for lugging capacity and durability.

[REVS]

You must have driven some crappy diesels Gautrek. Have you tried any of the new BMW diesels? Expensive cars, but great engines, especially when teamed with the auto transmission.

My Citroen has heaps of grunt where I value it most – ie, coming out of corners, overtaking on the highway in top gear and tackling long hills. I am sure that if I took my old Mazda to a test track and did the standing quarter mile thing, it would beat the Citroen fairly easily. But give me a winding mountain road to climb and the Citroen would leave the Mazda for dead. I guess it comes down to what kind of power you value most, but blasting away from a set of lights just doesn't do it for me.

And I don't have to worry about changing gears as mine is the new 'automated manual' developed by Citroen. It has a six-speed manual box, but the clutch is automatic –*ie, there's no clutch pedal. A couple of friends of mine who are motoring writers said "get the auto transmission if you're going turbo diesel". I've been driving cars for 39 years and this is my first auto, and I'm loving it. It does have 'flippers' either side of the steering wheel so you can change up or down manually any time you feel like it, but I hardly ever need to use them.

And as for the 'power band' of 2000-3000 revs argument, it all depends on your final drive gearing, doesn't it? When a car carries such tall gearing as a turbo diesel, those 3000rpm represent strong, grunty, usable power over a wider range of road speeds than you'd get in a petrol car with a power band that seems much wider, but only because it revs harder andhigher. My Mazda did a lot of revving without really going anywhere that fast.

But the topic of turbo diesels Versus petrol engines is about as winnable an argument as PC Versus Mac, in the end.

My main point is that cars which are boring to drive, like electric cars, will probably only attract people who don't like driving much anyway. All the people who like driving will be looking for something that's fun to drive, and I think turbo diesels are very likely to become the car engines which most of us will use in the future.

[costard]

Diesel's are fun to drive - you just have to learn not to slow down to go through corners. Landcruisers manage a respectable power slide on dry bitumen.

[Stalins Organ]

6 gears for the VW Jetta TDI in the US...but it will do 130mph, and peak power is at 4000 rpm with peak torque from 1750-2500..... so perhaps they have a sligtly wider rpm band now than whenever....

[dieseltaylor]

Hohoho - what timing

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

PRLog (Press Release) – Nov 01, 2009 – In the last days of the Global Green Car Challenge the large and luxurious Škoda Superb has proven to be the most fuel efficient vehicle so far in the medium to large cars segment of the challenge. Fuel consumption based on total route kilometers to date has placed the Superb at fourth place just after Ford Fiesta ECOnetic, Mini Cooper D and Suzuki Alto GLX, all of which are competing in the light to small car segment of the challenge.

With a steady cumulative fuel consumption as low as 4.59 litres per 100 kilometers, the Superb 2.0 TDI with 125kW and 350Nm of torque has taken most contenders by surprise.

Unlike other contenders, the Škoda Superb ( http://www.skoda.com.au/superb/ ) has throughout the challenge carried an excess amount of weight supporting the TopGear Australia team and its ‘postie’ bike. With other competing brands having support teams and support vehicles at their disposal, the Škoda Superb is the only vehicle acting as both competing vehicle and support vehicle at the same time. In the company of added disadvantage being over 100 kilograms of extra baggage, frequent stops to monitor and refuel the bike, along with an extra adult passenger, all affecting the vehicle’s fuel consumption, the Superb is still well ahead of its large car competitors.

A total of eight brands are competing in the 3000km Global Green Car Challenge which stretches from Darwin to Adelaide with the final stage of the challenge and results yielding an overall consumption of just 4.59 litres per 100km. Škoda Australia feel the goal of entering the challenge has been achieved; to prove that a car can be large, luxurious, carry a huge amount of luggage and passengers but still achieve fuel consumption at the same level as a traditional small car.

For further infomation on Skoda Australia ( http://www.skoda.com.au/ ) and finding local Skoda Dealers ( http://www.skoda.com.au/dealernetwork/finddealers.aspx ) visit our website.

[gautrek]

6 gears for the VW Jetta TDI in the US...but it will do 130mph' date= and peak power is at 4000 rpm with peak torque from 1750-2500..... so perhaps they have a sligtly wider rpm band now than whenever....

I see that mate.

But my 2lt Laguna is 145 BHP.Yet a turbo diesel 2lt Jetta is 140 BHP.My Laguna is also 13 years old now.So yes turbo diesels are brilliant aren't they.BUT Oh look its got less BHP but it uses a turbo.Brilliant.I wonder what a turbo on my car would make the BHP?

Like i said i know 6 people who have had to have new turbo's on diesels at around £1000 a throw.These were also fairly new cars.IE less than 6 years old.

I will admit that the new diesels are getting good IE they don't all chuck out clouds of evil smoke all the while now,and they do awesome MPH, and they are starting to archive stunning BHP from them.But petrol is still the fun way to drive.In fact didn't they have to change the rules in TOCC to make it competitive for Seat to race diesels.

People like me who always buy older cars(because i am tight and hate spend loads on a newer car) have to worry about what a TDi car is going to cost in repairs once they start getting to around 8 years old(which is the age of car i tend to buy(as you get amazing cars for not much money at that age)).The fact that TDI's need regular oil changes to keep the turbo bearings happy for one.

I was also amazed the other month when i actually worked out my MPG on my car after owning it for around 3 years.I did 300 miles fully loaded with 4 adults and a boot full of camping gear including a heavy tent.We did everything from town running to dual carriage way cruising at 60 to 90 MPH.I ended up getting 34 MPH. which i thought was brilliant.Not as much as diesel i know but not a lot less either and given the extra money diesels cost to buy in the first place(new or second hand) not too bad.in fact don't they say that if you buy a new diesel you need to do around 45k miles before you start getting the benefit( which may be slightly less at the moment as diesel is not much dearer than petrol.

[gautrek]

A couple of friends of mine who are motoring writers said "get the auto transmission if you're going turbo diesel"..

Exactly mate my point mate.Because if you don't you are changing gear all the bloody time.

[gautrek]

You must have driven some crappy diesels Gautrek. Have you tried any of the new BMW diesels? Expensive cars, but great engines, especially when teamed with the auto transmission.

No mate i buy older cars as i hate spending money on cars.But yet again when teamed with an auto transmission.Funny that thats twice in once post you back up what i say about need to change gear every 5 yards.

I love the whole driving experience and driving an auto leaves me cold.But then i do like treating my petrol car like a single speed every now and then and sticking in one gear for as long as possible.IE in traffic(20 to 40mph ) i will plonk it into second and drive on throttle,because i can.Oh and by the way i only brought up the racing away from the lights to show what i meant about TDI's.

I also learnt all about a high corner speeds and not braking if possible due to 5 years driving a 1200cc Lada years ago.

[Stalins Organ]

I see that mate.

But my 2lt Laguna is 145 BHP.Yet a turbo diesel 2lt Jetta is 140 BHP.My Laguna is also 13 years old now.

you should probably get a new one then - how about a 173BHP turbo diesel??!! :D:D

[dieseltaylor]

Renaults and turbo's - I suddenly remembered that Renault had a really clever design that ruined turbo's and they denied it was their design fault. Go back three -four years and there was a lot of angry punters:

http://ww.honestjohn.co.uk/forum/post/index.htm?f=4&t=52610

[costard]

snip

I also learnt all about a high corner speeds and not braking if possible due to 5 years driving a 1200cc Lada years ago.

That'll do it: 0-60 in a little under two minutes and you really don't want to lose any speed. Mine was an automatic Corolla (two forward gears and about 900cc).

[Michael Emrys]

That'll do it: 0-60 in a little under two minutes and you really don't want to lose any speed. Mine was an automatic Corolla (two forward gears and about 900cc).

Sounds like you'd always want to park facing downhill. Losing stoplight GPs to skateboarders must have been hard on your morale. Losing them to old ladies with walkers must have been crushing.

Michael

[costard]

Sounds like you'd always want to park facing downhill. Losing stoplight GPs to skateboarders must have been hard on your morale. Losing them to old ladies with walkers must have been crushing.

Michael

It's good policy to be nice to old ladies.

[Michael Emrys]

It's good policy to be nice to old ladies.

Letting them go first makes for a better image than having them give you the finger as they pass you by, eh?

Michael

[REVS]

Gautrek said, amongst other things: "... have to worry about what a TDi car is going to cost in repairs once they start getting to around 8 years old (which is the age of car i tend to buy).

That's why I stick to new cars. Everything eventually starts to wear out once the miles build up and get very expensive to fix, so I just stick with leasing new cars as company cars (my wife and I run a little two-person company) and trading them in on a new car every three years when both the warranty and lease run out. I haven't had to pay for a repair to a car for the last 12 years, but I have had to pay for routine servicing. Every three years, I'm looking for new wheels.

Interestingly, my Mazda 3 needed servicing every six months, and the cost ranged from about $250 for the smaller service to $450 for a more major one. Grand total of $700 for servicing was normal each year. For the mileage I do, the Citroen Turbo Diesel needs just one service a year, and they list the cost of that at $315.

I know I lose a fair bit of money on the instant depreciation lost on new cars, but I do like owning safe, reliable transport and not having to deal with mechanics and spare parts guys anymore. I spent so many years in the 70s, 80s and 90s driving and repairing old cars that I never want to go back there, ever!