I don't get this ad

[cochrane]

@zombivqan

I had a 1984 diesel Ford Escort. I loved the thing.

My brother had a diesel VW Rabbit in the late 80s. It was a POS, but most diesel cars were then.

[Magiver]

@Joey_P

No, there aren’t a lot, and yes, most of the are VW’s (and the rest, I think, are luxury imports) but I think at this point if someone was pumping diesel into their tank no one is going to try to stop them. Not like they would have 10 years ago.

AUDI diesels. Not diesels in general. The commercial is their way of saying they entered the market.

[GreasyJack]

@CookingWithGas

That is quite strange. I worked for Ford in 1979-83 and didn’t think we sold a diesel Escort in the U.S. Did you buy it as a standard buy through a U.S. dealer? Or did you do some sort of import deal?

It was an option in '84 and '85 although it was a Mazda-sourced engine instead of the in-house Ford diesel engine that came in the European escort. GM did something similar by putting an Isuzu diesel in the Chevette for a few years. Those were both actually pretty nice cars-- if fuel prices had cooperated those could very well have been the cars that got Americans into diesel.

[yabob]

@GreasyJack

The Europeans have mostly solved the misfueling problem already. Most newer diesel cars sold there have a gizmo in the fuel filler that only allows you to insert the larger diesel nozzle. On Ford’s system, the same thing that blocks off incorrectly-sized nozzles also serves as the fuel cap, so it has the fringe benefit of eliminating a step in a fill up. The problem is that in North America the diesel nozzles aren’t standardized so it wouldn’t work here. I imagine if diesels did take off in any big way that’d be relatively easy to change, though.

I have a 2010 VW diesel. I have a recall notice sitting around somewhere to take it in for installation of some sort of doo-dad like that. I’m mildly curious as to how they make it work mechanically. They’ve already sent me big yellow stickers that went inside the fuel flap and in a ring around the filler neck saying “DIESEL ONLY”.

BTW, the Audi diesels have been out a few years in the US. The A3 diesel was introduced at about the same time as my VW, and used the same engine.

BMW has done some funny commercials based on the reputation earlier diesels have had in the US. A couple of years ago, they ran one during the 2011 Superbowl using David Bowie’s “Changes” that I thought was amusing:

[Kimballkid]

@engineer_zomb_freak

While that is theoretically true, in most cases there isn’t any major damage done. Usually the car will drive a short distance while spewing large quantities of smoke out through the tailpipe and then they’ll stop. Then the car gets towed to a shop where the mechanic drains the tank and flushes the fuel system. The tow and the mechanic’s time will cost you a bit of money, and of course you have the inconvenience of having your car completely un-driveable, but I’ve never personally heard of anyone causing any real harm to their car from it.

@Qwakkeddup

Diesel is an oil or lubricant, Gasoline however is a solvent. Diesel in a gas car causes pre-ignition, but the car could probably run on it for a short time.

I had a 1983 Chevy Caprice that we changed from diesel to gas, because the heads cracked in the diesel engine and we couldn’t find any good ones, and it still had about half a tank of diesel fuel in it. We rigged up something to get it to town to fill up the rest of the way with gas and it never had a problem with running after that.

@RitterSport

If gas cars can recover from having diesel in the tank, but diesel cars seem to have more problems if they get gas in the tank, why aren’t diesel nozzles the smaller ones? That is, why is it difficult to put diesel into a gas engine but easy to put gas into a diesel engine, if the latter is worse for the respective engine?

@RitterSport

Also, if it’s used to fill pickups and semis, flow rate might be an issue with a smaller nozzle.

This is probably it as, even with the larger nozzle, it takes quite a while to pump 200 gallons or so into a semi. I can’t imagine how long it would take if the nozzle were smaller.

@CookingWithGas

I’ve seen diesel Mercedes in the U.S. back as far as 1985.

@GreasyJack

Yeah, there’s a lot of people talking about diesels being too new for people in the US to know about them, but I’d say the opposite is true. A lot of people are too young to remember diesel cars being sold in any great numbers in the US, which really only happened during a brief period in the late 70’s and early 80’s. The Japanese and European diesels of that period were super reliable but they were loud, smokey and slow. The GM diesel cars were loud, smokey, slow and very unreliable and pretty much soured Americans on diesels for the next three decades.

As I said above, I had a 1983 Chevy Caprice with one of the true GM diesels, not the converted gas engine, and I loved that car. I was getting about 30 MPG with that thing and it was a really nice car to boot. After we changed over to gas, I kind of fell out of love with it. My brother had a 1985 Chevy Blazer diesel that he got over 250,000 miles out of before it became too costly to maintain. He also had a 1983 (?) Pontiac Grand Prix diesel and it too was a very nice car. I can’t remember why he got rid of it. Ah, the good old days.

Also, around here at least, the diesel nozzles are usually green while the gas ones are usually red and blue. The E85 ones are usually yellow.

[Mallard]

I’ll offer out some information for what it’s worth, as my professional mechanic experience is Pre-fuel injection.

When we first started seeing diesel cars in the later 70’s, from time to time, someone would fill a gasoline car with diesel and problems ensued. However, if it were like 30-40% diesel and 60-70% gasoline, at least with a carbureted gasoline engine, the car ran poorly and smoked like h*ll but you could still keep going until the fuel ran low, then refill with gasoline and you were fine. However, the pump on the diesel would quit the moment gasoline touched it, damaging the pump but the diesel engine would quit running immediately and before it was damaged in any way.

Again, however, this information is well over 30 years old, so just relaying some past customer experiences.

[velomont]

Thanks for the discussion everyone. I apologize for not popping in after asking the question in the first place. Everybody more or less confirmed my thoughts. I’ve also been thinking in the last few years that car ads seem to be uniquely lame. I really believe that they’ve run out of gimmicks or they are hiring bad ad agencies.

[Mangetout]

@Czarcasm

I think most of you missed one of the points of the commercial. They weren’t screaming just because she was using diesel-they were screaming because they couldn’t believe a luxury car like that could possibly be a diesel.

Quoted for further truth. I’m not rather sure many people in this thread got it.

[installLSC]

Aren’t virtually all diesel pumps marked green these days? That in itself would make it unlikely to not know a pump is diesel.