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Thanks for the informative post, Wayne. You have summed up what I imagined my experience would be in a VW TDI, but since I live in California, I would never be able to try.

Personally I look on hybrids and diesels as being on the same side in the battle against over-consumption of oil. Hopefully we will get a cleaner diesel sometime soon so that we can have both of these technologies available in the struggle to use less oil and be kinder to our planet as well.

Glad you liked it Xcel.

The more torque the more fuel economy too...

Rammstein

Different and efficient by choice!

A few things to note.. the current generation Golf/Jetta came out way back in 1999. The new one is due some time this fall as a 2006 model, and it should be an improvement over the then 8-year old design of the current Jetta.

Also, ULSD (ultra-low sulpher diesel) phases in sometime in mid 2006 and entirely nationwide some time in 2007. Once that's complete it will make all diesels a lot cleaner and make additional particulate traps possible on newly released diesel models.

Honda's i-CTDi diesel that they sell in Europe in the Civic and Accord is largely regarded as one of the best passenger car diesel engines ever developed. It's also very clean. Once the US has clean diesel fuel, we may finally see the i-CTDi's sold here. Also, you can run biodiesel in any diesel car with no modifications and that will also clean it up greatly.

I've driven the Golf 1.8T, which is their gas-based small turbo car and I thought it was quite nice. Although only rated at something like 24/31 with the manual transmission, I drove one from North Carolina to Arizona (2250 miles) and got 33-34.5mpg the whole way. I've read that TDi owners will often get over 50mpg at regular high interstate speeds and high 50's to 60mpg on lower speed secondary highways. That's quite impressive given there's no special aero tricks to the Golf/Jetta TDi and they weigh over 3000 pounds. I might take one for a test drive when the new generation comes out in the fall.

AZcivic, the A4's (Golf and Jetta) are only 5.5 model years old.

I believe you are referring to the 7 years old New Beetle which is based on the A4 chassis.

The A4's drive and feel like luxury cars, but you have to know that there are quite a few problems with them. Bad parts/low quality parts used by VW brake often.

They are totally different beast than the A3's (previous generation Jetta) and mine, B4 passats.

Lots of fun...depends if you consider that fun...

You forgot to mention that us diesel owners can also run on Waste Veggie oil or Straight veggie oil.

This is not biodiesel.

SVO/WVO is the use of any veggie oil (most likely canola oil used in restaurants), which is filtered and put in a heated tank before being fed to the engine.

Less trouble than biodiesel, but you need a secondary heated tank.

As for the weight, yes VW's are becoming heavier and heavier.

The 5th generation will be even heavier...

Rammstein

Different and efficient by choice!

The body is changing, but the engine, transmission, et cetera will remain the same (Pump Deusse TDI).

troy