[petrolhead2014]

Originally Posted by Neph

some anti 328 folks need to drop the 50K argument. if you want a pure driving experience, you don't need the fancy options. All you need is:

-Sport package
-maybe leather

this puts you at $42K. for those who really want a true driving experience, that is not a bad price to pay. you do not need some twat packages like Parking Assist etc...

Some people can't park! So they'll drive a tractor engine to save a few cents to be able to add parking assist

[petrolhead2014]

Originally Posted by nsra33

I think that Americans don't like diesel cars just because of the noise the engine makes. If you take that, the diesel cars are much better: more torque (=more driving pleasure) and much more fuel efficiency. Europeans don't buy diesel cars because the price of the liter / gallon of diesel is cheaper than the liter / gallon of gasoline, but because the fuel efficiency in cities is much better (way better) and you still have (more) driving pleasure. The price of a diesel car is a bit higher, but in Europe gasoline cars loose a lot of value (less people want to buy them), so you will recover all the money (and more) you have invested in a diesel car. Just my European perspective.

Definitely not. I'm European and can confirm that no European buys diesel because of 'driving pleasure'. Most of the time it's because of company taxation rates which makes the purchase price of diesels much cheaper than petrol (and the small mpg advantage). The small proportion of private buyers do so because they've been told diesels have better residuals and/or don't care much about driving pleasure and rather want a car for A to B with the right badge.

[petrolhead2014]

Originally Posted by Reznick

The bottom line is , no matter where you are from in the world , you tend to like what is familiar to you. From your moms cooking to the cars you drive. But to say that torque equals driving pleasure is a bit of a stretch.I have a couple work trucks that put out massive amounts of torque and they are far from pleasurable.Have you ever looked at it from the other way around?,, why do Europeans like diesels so much.There are lots of them on the road.Your family probably owns one and you've probably owned one at one point , if not right now. These cars all perform well , no matter what engine you choose to have under the hood. Its a matter of preference. Its like arguing which color is better then the other. That falls into the same category . Different colors sell better in different parts of the world. Thats what SHOULD make this world a great place,, but it never seems to work out that way.

You're right. And most of that volume comes from fleet cars who are almost always diesels as they are taxed heavily from CO2 emissions. This results in thousands of pounds/euros of savings on the purchase price and justifies swapping a sweet 28i for a 20/30/35d tractor.

[sqwinny]

Uh. Way to dig up a thread from 10 years ago. Mods, lock this please.