2 years ago

The Great Diesel con!

Never one to follow a crowd, I've been getting increasingly weary of the typical mid-sized-to-large diesel car of late. You know the sort, they tear up the outside lane of your typical M-way, dual carriageway, waiting for you to vacate so they can engage warp drive using that "thumping mid range torque " (copyright- every car mag since about 2000) and move onto the next victim. The motoring press are to blame, having gone from diesel haters to diesel lovers in under a decade and telling us how "in the real world, the torquey diesel is at least as quick as the petrol counterpart".

Well I owned an A3 TDI for six years and enjoyed it on the motorway, but found the experience rather one dimensional. Personally I think we are all being conned. If you look at the performance figures of today's typical two litre diesels, BWM's excepted, in outright poke, they're a bit, well poor. Take the new Insigna 160 CDTI, coming to an outside lane soon. 30-70 is 8.4 seconds, according to autocar. Well friends, your 1988 cavalier SRI took just 8.3 seconds with 130 BHP. From 0-100, The current 140PS A4 TDI is a second slower than the old 130 ps petrol A4 from 2000! Is this really progress? Granted, the diesels have great roll on acceleration on motorways, without changing gear, but some of that feeling of grunt is just down to turbo lag followed by the turbo torque rushing in.

I have found when driving these TDI's that the power comes in one great push and then dissipates far too quickly. If you actually down change when driving your typical petrol car, you won't be short-changed against a diesel. To test my theory I came up behind a typically aggressively driven X Type Jag diesel the other day in my humble 1.6 Focus with just 107 torques (As JC would say). Mr Jag was hassling some poor innocent who then made way. We were going up a reasonable incline at about 75 MPH so I changed down to 4th and waited to be left standing by the "surf of mid range torque" as Mr X Type clogged down his right foot and sent plumes of black smoke way in my direction, as they do. Well, "surprise surprise", as our speed approached three figures, I found that he had failed to shake me off. That really narked him I can tell you.

You see, diesels are great for modern day lazy Europeans who cant be arsed to change gear and want instant go. I think, however, that the outright performance of normal cars is actually getting poorer, because of all the diesels with poor power to weight ratios. Why aren't the so called performance car press telling us this? Yep, if you have a humble petrol car, just stir that gear lever, give it some welly and you wont be short changed against your typical rep-mobile. Then there's the weight of the engine up front. My A3 was just awful at changing direction and other diesels I have driven weren't much better with 100KG of extra iron block up front. The equivalent petrol car feels so much more nimble in the turns. That's before we come to the fumes - even the new ones still seem to make a right whiff! Its not as if many of them are that economical in real world driving and the black stuff costs a fortune.

Sure diesels have come along way and have their place, but the stuff is so expensive and having returned to petrol I am convinced that a petrol engine is a more involving drive. The only exceptions for me are the 6 cylinder BMW's which are frankly superb - but you'd still take an M3 over a 335d, wouldn't you?!

So for all those track day fans, I hope petrol will stay with us for a while yet and let all the lemmings shift to the black stuff. Unless you do 20k miles a year, you're better off with petrol power!