Yahoo Autos What You Learn After Driving a Chevy Cruze Diesel
For years, we've extolled the virtues of diesel. While the public complained that it's dirty and gross, we've advocated for the increased fuel mileage and plentiful low-end torque. Before electric cars, diesel was the closest you could get to a car that had huge twist from nearly 0 rpm.
Slowly but surely, the tides changed. Automakers started offering more diesels and people started buying them. VW led the charge and brought over some excellent options they advertised heavily. We couldn't stop telling friends to go out and buy a diesel Golf. "It's efficient and fun," we'd say. Of course, it was too good to be true. The automaker was found to be part of a huge plot to cheat emissions regulations with its diesel powered cars, a plot that effectively ended VW's diesel sales in the US and rendered our years of evangelizing the fuel worthless.
But diesel is still out there in cars that aren't cheating regulations. Cars like the new Chevy Cruze. Yes, you can get a new Chevy Cruze with a tiny 1.6 liter turbo diesel engine. And–we're not going to ask who slipped this by the product planner–you can get it with a manual gearbox. It's a car that most people likely don't know exists, and a package that even fewer will end up opting for once they learn that it does.
That's a shame, because this is the perfect setup for an economy car.
The Cruze has always been a fine little car (go ahead and snark, people who don't like Chevys for no specific reason). It looks good outside and has a surprisingly nice interior, particularly in the higher end Premier trim which has leather and a really solid infotainment system. The dash and other surfaces don't feel like Playskool, it feels like something more expensive. It also feels better than a Jetta, which would have been one of the diesel cars that it directly competed with...
Oh well.
There's actually been a diesel Cruze for ages. The last generation car was also offered as an oil burner. The 2.0 diesel got great gas mileage on the highway, but couldn't claim to be quick or even somewhat quick. The low-end torque that a diesel is known for was missing, meaning you'd have to rev the pants off it to make it do anything.
About two percent of buyers chose it.
This new one is better. The manual has to be the one to get because it's enjoyable and just super easy to use. It's like stick shift for dummies. Off the line, there's enough torque that there's rarely a need to apply gas as you let off the clutch, instead you just glide away on a hill of torquey goodness. That makes it the perfect car to learn how to drive stick in. IIf you use the gas, it's easy to chirp the tires, which is nice if that's a thing that you like to do.
But don't think that equals the most spirited acceleration. The engine hits a very solid wall where it stops making power well before redline, but this isn't a car that you buy because you want to rev out to redline or blitz a backroad. You want to set sail on a sea of smooth torquey goodness. In the city that means traffic is a breeze. On the highway you can sit at 75 mph all day long with no issues.
If you understand what you're getting, the Cruze delivers.
That's why it's a shame that the VW diesel debacle (debacsel? diesacle?) had to happen. Diesels have consistently gotten better for the last decade. A lot of that is thanks to VW selling so many of them that other brands needed to figure out a way to catch up. Now we have diesels that are great because a lot of development went in to making them compete with ones that weren't complying with the law.
Let's hope the Cruze Diesel doesn't die because of something another company did.
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