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Posted by D Sherman [72.47.153.24] on Friday, May 18, 2012 at 12:01:26 :
In Reply to: Re: OT... North Dakota ranks 2nd in US Oil production??? posted by Kaegi [24.16.253.154] on Friday, May 18, 2012 at 11:34:06 :
Yes, you can buy a very few diesel cars in the US. When I was about 19, I worked for a man who had a Mercedes diesel, and had me drive it up to his island in Canada in the spring, after he'd taken his yacht up for the season. You had to start it with glow plugs, it clattered and it smoked, but it was a diesel car and it was better than the infamous Cadillac diesel of the same era. It was interesting explaining to the customs man why an American teenager was driving into Canada in a Mercedes that belonged to someone else. I don't know why my boss had bought such a car, but maybe it was because it was the state of the art at the time. He also owned a 1933 Deusenberg, with a big straight-8 engine, that was the first production car to employ hydraulic brakes (it had a brake pressure gauge on the dashboard). The only time I saw it driven was when he and the governor were riding in it in the 4th of July parade.
The VW diesels have been popular with "biodiesel" hobbyists for a long time. I don't know that they're still importing any, but there are definitely still some around.
Nonetheless, the fact remains that Europeans have all kinds of diesel cars to choose from, and they get better mileage than our complicated expensive hybrids, and the reason we can't get those cars here is that they don't meet EPA smog rules.
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