Cheating the American driver

What you don’t know may not seem to hurt you, but every country outside of America has an unfair advantage over the American economy — and it really hurts. I write this from England — over for a family blessing of a marriage — where I rented a Budget car for the week. They handed me the key to something weird, a Citroen Xsaris. If you can say that, you’re doing better than I am.

It took a while to get used to the controls and speedometer (located in the middle of the dashboard), but I instantly loved the seating position (at 6’4� that’s a rarity) and, on turning the key, discovered I was driving a diesel. Yes, a family car with a diesel, 1.8 liters, 115 horsepower, but tons of torque (meaning it accelerates). Okay, we took to the freeway and drove with traffic, steady at 75 mph (sometimes accelerating easily to 85 mph to pass someone).

After a while, I glanced down and, hidden in the instrument cluster of lights was this little “52.4.� I asked my wife to determine what it meant.

“Oh,� she said. “It says mpg in little letters.�

What? The car was averaging 52 miles per gallon? Even if you take 10 percent off that (the British gallon is about 10 percent larger), it means we were getting, in a family car with 5 comfortable seats and plenty of headroom, doing 75 mph, over 45 miles per gallon. As Sandy pushed a button or two it revealed that we had a little over 550 miles to go before needing to refuel.

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Okay, I thought, this French family car is something special. So, on arrival 200 miles later in Devon (average for the trip 53.5 mpg), I told my story. I got all sorts of funny looks. “My BMW 500 series does better than that!â€�  “My Saab station wagon gets about the same.â€�  “The Mercedes 600 series does about the same or better.â€� You get the idea. As an American innocent, it was humiliating.

For those of you thinking that diesels are polluters compared to gas engines, or that they are slow, noisy or somehow less vroom-vroom, guess again. These sulfur-free diesels pollute the same carbon dioxide (and less carbon monoxide) as gas engines. The BMW accelerates the same, gas or diesel. And at half the consumption, what’s the global warming message? Given the cost and damage of replacing hybrid engine batteries, give me an economical diesel every day. And the gas engine is so far behind it’s laughable.

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When you stop to think about it, farmers, truck drivers, and ships all choose diesels because of efficiency (or so we think). Actually, perhaps what they want is power! After Audi won the Le Mans and Sebring races with diesel, do we now get the message? GM makes a total of 22 diesels for regular cars in Europe, but do they offer the same engines for some of the very same model cars in the United States (Saturn)? Ford is just the same. One diesel they sell for the Escape in England gives that car a U.S. mpg of over 45! That’s way better than the hybrid version.

Also, diesel is available across America at almost every gas station. And the DEC regulations for storing and handling diesel fuel show that it is much safer than gasoline. You can even put a cigarette out in an open can of diesel. Try that with gasoline.

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To make matters worse, diesel takes less energy (and pollution) to refine from crude oil than gasoline, so there’s an environmental benefit there as well. Where’s the downside?

The downside is the gasoline lobby. The downside is a stubborn holding on to sulfur-based diesel fuel for decades longer than even China and India. The downside is silly public perception, fed by the gasoline lobby and promotion, that diesels are slow, cumbersome, and smelly. Okay, I’ll admit at idle at the traffic light the car does sound “uncool.� But when I zip past another gas pump, when I keep half the dollars in my pocket, I can put up with feeling momentarily uncool.

Years ago, the German Volkswagen president was asked why they didn’t bring all the Passat and Golf diesels to the U.S. market. He responded by saying it was a marketing decision based on public perception. Well, guess what, we need to get over this “perception� and fast.

If I could hand you the keys to two cars — each the same, one with a diesel, one with a gas engine — with one you can cut your fill-up bills in half, which would you choose? Until the car makers stop worrying about new-fangled designs and add-on do-dads and get into the business of selling cars that people can use, cars that are just as safe, that double the fuel mileage, cars that need servicing half as often (forgot to tell you that, sorry, diesels also need less servicing)… until that day, we’ll continue to be held hostage by the lobbyists and Detroit selling us 1950s technology V8s and V6s instead of what the rest of the world is already driving.

It seems to me that as far as they are concerned, loyalty to Americans means nothing. Their motto seems to be: “Why build it better, cheaper, more economical when the dumb public has no idea what’s already on sale in the rest of the world?� 

Well, now you know. But there is nothing you can go out and buy, except a foreign car, of course. And you thought people were being unfair to Ford, Chrysler, and GM. They know, oh yes, they know… they already make them and sell them, but not to us!

 

The writer lives in Amenia Union.