The US just started using clean diesel fuel. It takes a while for the car companies to get their cars certified. There’s also the not-so-small matter of the US market’s dislike for diesels. The engine is built in Great Britain; it would be very expensive to import. I saw an estimate that Ford would have to charge nearly $26,000 for the diesel Fiesta. Sure, it gets 60 MPG, but a Honda Civic EX starts at $19,000 and gets 36 MPG. Ford could build a factory for the engine in Mexico, but where would they get the money, and why would they take such a big chance on a technology that Americans traditionally don’t want?
Ford will defintely bring the Fiesta to the US, initially made in Europe, then built in the Hermosillo plant in Mexico. It will be a while before the diesel will be sold here, mostly because gas is too cheap and the diesel premium is too large.
Yep, a lot of people bought diesel cars in the 1970s and 1980s who will never buy one again. These were nothing more than car bodies with modified truck (tractor trailer) engines wedged under the hood. A lot of people also knew someone in their neighborhood in the 70s and 80s who bought one of those diesels and regretted it. It is kind of like all the bad marketing decisions Detroit’s big three made back then. Those decisions haunt them now because they still have unhappy customers from back then.
Do you remember all those old diesel cars that had to be plugged into an electrical outlet at night? What a nightmare!
Yes, my neighbor, an otherwise nice guy, had a VW Rabbit diesel; a giant alarm clock on wheels!! He rose at 5 am Monday to Friday and left the house a 5:45 am, waking up the whole neighborhood.
The ultimate US rust buckets were the 1957 Chrysler products, ALL OF THEM! They were rushed into production and disintegrated wihin 5 years. I had a '57 Plymouth, the same type they put into time capsule in 1957 in Texas. When they opened the box in 2007 there was just a pile of rust inside. Some water had seeped in and the car just disintegrated without a mile on the odometer.