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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 118mph
103bhp 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?
19 Comments on “Save Diesel ’till You’re Blue(Motion) In The Face...”
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“Which am I going to die of, if I carry on living in Europe? ”
Chances are, something that you never would have gotten old enough to have to worry about in a previous generation.
What’s wrong with Jill Wagner’s figure?
Nobody ever successfully committed suicide by closing their garage door and sitting inside with their Diesel engine running. The same can not be said for gasoline powered cars however.
Your life is not in immediate danger either from the Golf, or the Prius …unless you go about licking battery terminals of course.
Screw the bluemotion, I just got a ride in a new Golf tdi and they might as well call it a GTD. It’s a seriously cool car, and the spec was perfect, 4-door, 6-spd. I didn’t get to drive, as it’s being broken in by the owner, but it has serious balls even at low revs and the best Golf interior I’ve ever seen. The suspension felt sporty, but not quite as much as the GTI.
First diesel I’ve ever been in that really makes a case for compression ignition as a technology of choice. The manual transmission might have something to do with it, much better than the DSG equipped Jetta.
There is that Prius ad on the interwebs where a guy tries to kill himself. But he doesn’t have much luck because the ICE won’t fire up when he’s not moving. The Prius is good for some people but I’d prefer to have a Golf TDI hybrid.
A Jetta TDI owner sits right next to me at work.
1 year old car: 4 times to dealer: CEL light 2X; driver window stuck 1X and DSG acting up 1X. Its front tires are now worn inside.
And 10 meters from us, sits our president: ’05 Prius: 0 problems so far.
At 42 now, if it was My Money, I’d shoot myself in the head with a Prius. Now, if it was Someone Else’s Money, I’d shoot myself in the foot with yet another VW product.
PS: owned ’84 Fox, ’88 Quantum wagon, ’91 Golf, ’97 Golf.
cRacK hEaD aLLeY:
Your co-worker needs to discover the wonderful world of VAG-COM.
VW has had the ENTIRE U.S. market for diesel cars to itself (save the odd M-B) for ALMOST 25 YEARS, and only NOW are they even pretending to react to the success of Japanese good fuel economy/low emissions champions with essentially the SAME OLD THING…?
Why even bother over here?
PS. I like diesels, and I think new VW products feel nice on the road, but I’ll never try to depend on a VW.
Why does VW call it Bluemotion? Does it use the blue juice?
VW diesels are kinda cool I guess, save for the timing belts, but they ARE STILL VOLKSWAGENS.
And yes its a shame small diesels end up getting painted with that brush.
Gallons? Imperial gallons? Heres a thought. Why not convert to the Fing METRIC SYSTEM once and for all. Does anybody have any idea how much time and space is wasted by this stupidity? If I was Obama I would outlaw inch-only tape measures TOMORROW. Next time youre in your hardware store, try and find one with millimeters. We aint going to get smarter kids or more scientists and engineers until we do.
Why not convert to the Fing METRIC SYSTEM once and for all. Does anybody have any idea how much time and space is wasted by this stupidity?
Preach it. It’s f#$kin’ retarded to hang onto imperial measure.
As long as we’re on the topic of VWs, why don’t they bring the Polo over here already? I can understand it not being feasible a decade ago with the SUV craze at its frenzied heights, but that show’s over. With the revival of the B-segment (Fit, Yaris, Fiesta–if it ever gets here), VW’s missing out.
Tosh
“VW has had the ENTIRE U.S. market for diesel cars to itself (save the odd M-B) for ALMOST 25 YEARS, and only NOW are they even pretending to react to the success of Japanese good fuel economy/low emissions champions with essentially the SAME OLD THING…?”
It’s not “the SAME OLD THING” really. I own that, a 96 tdi, and can’t really say much for the powertrain asides from good early torque and fuel efficiency, everything else sucks. It is truly a weenie’s choice. The new tdi’s, especially the Golf, are sick. I’d say they’re actually smooth enough to give the 2.0T a run for it’s money. And I can’t say enough how much that interior impressed me, better than recent Audi’s IMO.
Its likely not coming stateside with a 1.6 tdi. Bad thing, but then I would feel sorry if they brought just the one I would buy and lost tens of millions federalizing to counterproductive US specific rules just for me.
It’d be great if the US would adopt the metric system, though I doubt it will happen in my lifetime. Canada went metric in the 70s, but because of our strong industrial ties with the US, whole sectors still operate using imperial measures, whether officially or unofficially. Some older folks still ask “How much that is in English?”.
I consider myself fortunate to have been a teenager during the transition, since I became comfortable working in both systems. Most of the time I think and work in metric, with one exception. When using Imperial measure, like Americans, we speak in miles per gallon–i.e. how far you can travel on a given amount of fuel–whereas in metric, we use litres per one hundred kilometres–i.e. how much fuel is required to travel a given distance. The first produces numbers like 32 and 36, the second numbers like 8.8 and 7.8. Maybe it’s a deficiency in my thought process, but I find it much easier to visualize being able to go four miles further with the very real gallon I have left in my tank (and that higher numbers are better), than to ponder that I’d need another four-fifths of a litre to reach an imaginary hundred kilometre mark (and that higher is worse).
The Prius “made green trendy” did it?
Sandals and going Vegan still has no fashion appeal to me much like the Prius. And i’ve never considered those emotionally dysfunctional basket cases (Hollywood actors) a blueprint for guidance on life.
Presumably if the Prius makes Toyota trendy, also making the Landcruiser and upcoming LF-A sports coupe makes them untrendy… or looking like hypocrites peddling spin!
Anyone know the cost of the “Blue Juice”?
And, how much this rig would be expected to use?
ZekeToronto:
You make a nice point about fuel consumption numbers. But, having a smaller number for better fuel economy and a bigger for worse is not so bad, is it?
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”!
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.