Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler Honda Ridgeline

Why would anyone want a diesel when it costs more per gallon that gasoline?

Because the mileage of a diesel can be much higher than that of a gasoline car, producing the same amount (or much greater) torque.

Not in Ontario. It depends where you live I guess. Diesels will usually last much longer than a comparable gasoline engine, in many cases it will have twice the lifetime assuming both engines are maintained. As Ken said, in many cases, diesels can get better mileage and make more torgue than gas engines...it depends on the requirements of the driver. VW gets some seriously good mileage in their clean diesels although they can be a little pricey to buy. In North America, we still tend to associate diesels with work vehicles but in Europe it's a different ball game.

VW...Clean diesels, HA! I know they make the claim but everyone I have been behind lately still puffs that black smoke out of their tailpipe just like all the other deisels, at least until North America fully cleans up our Deisel fuel. Another point against Deisels now are the new particulate filters they have and they plug up very easily and are a fortune to replace or clean or at least they few we have had to do at work so far.

61 mpg is impressive, anyway you look at it.

I always find it funny that manufacturers brag about cars getting 32 MPG, while I distinctly remember a Rabbit Diesel in the mid 80s being rated at, I think, 58 MPG.

My brother had one of those. It got crazy mpg's considering what cars were getting at the time.

61mpg is impressive if it actually achieves it in the real world,. I know of few people with Honda Fit's and they get over 50mpg combined driving.

Even if you got 55mpg, that'd make me smile! there was, in fact, a CDN car show(looked like from BC) who tested a bunch of cars for fuel consumption verses Transport Canada's numbers and the only car to BEAT the numbers was the VW diesel...when they drove it "hard" they got the same mpg's as TransCan but when they drove conservatively they actually did better than the TC numbers. Only things that bother me about VW....expensive to buy, and they seem to charge more for service from what I've seen/heard.

Good to know that VW can do as claimed, a rarity these days.