[Honda100]

Originally Posted by oldtamiyaphile

Don't see any shots of it either off road or dirty? The only off road picture you've posted is a dirt road where a W124 was sufficient.

The Rover might look shiny in the pics, but it's really dusty and there's plenty of dirt all over it. I never wash it.

Originally Posted by oldtamiyaphile

I don't mean fleet vehicles I mean the entire US auto fleet (all cars/ suvs in the US). A lot of big vehicles that needn't be so big.

That I will wholeheartedly agree with then, I thought you meant "fleet" as in commercial/government. Yes, there's far too many oversized SUVs and trucks and even the basic runabout vehicles have bigger engines. I have the smallest engine possible in my Civic and it's a 1.8 liter whereas in Thailand 1.3 liters are commonplace.

Originally Posted by oldtamiyaphile

There are a LOT of RR's on the roads, and one from 1976 is still worse than a family hatch from 1976. An 09 RR is getting close to the average age of a car on the road today, so half the cars you see will be newer, and half will be older. It will still be in the dirty half. Smog failures seem to be a thing of the past (almost), and nowadays cars come with pretty long smog warranties in the US.

At least where I live, there's remarkably few Rovers on the road but yeah, that's my point of view. And when you compare to the U.S., RR to Suburban, F-150, Chevy Silverado ratio is tragically small.

Also, there's plenty of cars that are well over 10 years old since it's relatively cheap to keep a used car running in the U.S. Lots of Chevy Caprices, Crown Vics, Lincolns, Escalades that are 10 years plus, as well as older Hondas and Toyotas (although those aren't admittedly that dirty). That's just my point of view though and of course it represents a small area of the world

Originally Posted by oldtamiyaphile

I accept that businesses need big vehicles, and big vehicles need to be diesel. In my experience with my TDI Transporter, the fuel savings are eaten up by the higher purchase cost of the vehicle, higher fuel cost per litre, and vastly higher service costs ($120 just for low ash oil), just did an injector pump at 30,000miles from new, DPF cleaner additive with every fill, oil changes every 5k miles to keep the turbo happy (before we consider the eventual DPF replacement bill). But you just can't buy a petrol van anymore

Sorry mate, petrol vans a plenty in the U.S. for the exact reasons you've outlined. Some call me stupid for running a powerstroke when I could have gone with a 6.8 V10 or maybe even a 5.4 Triton, but I grew up on a farm and there's diesel in my vein admittedly, and probably a lot of other carcinogens as well.

Originally Posted by oldtamiyaphile

A diesel isn't three times as efficient as a petrol if you look at EPA numbers it's about 40%, which is the same as the 'gain' I got from switching to a similar sized/ weight TDi from my (broken down) Mercedes petrol (it's more aerodynamic, has an extra gear, and has LRR tyres - so only a portion of that gain is from the engine itself) This is 100% city driving with a 16.7mph average speed. With a petrol you can use EOC and turn it off at lights, can't often do that with a TD. A petrol with auto stop would basically close the gap.

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Mpg for mpg from my RRS 5.0 supercharged to my RRS 3.0 TDv6, I get triple the mileage in the city, but that's my case I know.

I think the actual energy content "benefit" in diesel is 20% over gasoline? So all things considered equal, 20% increase is in order, but someone correct me if I'm wrong.

Also with the sportwagon, I was able to top 75 mpg when I was really really trying to go for fuel economy and having no other mods. A normal Jetta on the best of days being completely modded to the extreme I think would struggle to top 55 - 60 mpg.