My parrents bought a VW Diesel Rabbit back in 1978, for $8,000. It got 50 mpg. Wish I could find one today! The new Diesel Jetta gets about 48 mpg, but costs $21-23,000. A Toyota Carola gets 41 mpg on gasoline, for about $13-16,000. Diesel is about $.20 more expensive than gas (why is that? It used to be twenty cents cheaper. Taxes?)
Around 1980-1982, we had a Volkswagen diesel pickup truck that got 62 mpg. We used it to tow our Hobie 18 to regattas.
Apparently, the problem is that we used to have the technology, but somebody lost the recipe.
