http://driving.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,12389-1620585,00.html

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           Who's laughing now? The day of the diesel is here
           Once noisy and smelly, diesels are now so refined their ride
rivals petrol cars and they can be far cheaper to run. No wonder sales are
soaring, writes Andrew Frankel of The Sunday Times

                       MARK BOURDILLON. Thanks to Shell, Nissan

           We used to buy diesel cars because they were cheap and didn't
cost much to run. The fact that they sounded like tractors and had smelly,
sooty exhausts was a standing joke and for a long time gave them a
reputation as difficult to budge as Lada's.
           For refinement and performance, petrol was king. Until about six
years ago, that is. A diesel revolution started then and it's still
happening.

           So while overall car sales are expected to slide in 2005,
forecasters are confident that diesel will continue to buck the trend.
Indeed, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders predicts 35% of the
2.4m cars bought in Britain this year will be diesel, rising to about 40% in
the next few years and settling just below the 1m mark. Six years ago, it
was 14%.

           Everybody is getting in on the act. You can already choose derv
versions of all the bestselling family cars, but now luxury manufacturers
are slapping diesel badges on the boots of their vehicles. Lexus will soon
launch its first diesel in the new IS200. Jaguar will follow with the first
diesel XJ this summer and Mercedes revealed a 4 litre bi-turbo SL sports car
concept at the Geneva motor show this year. If the SL goes into production
it would be as fast as a Porsche 911.

           The question is, why? Clearly, as fuel prices march relentlessly
towards £4 per gallon, the imperative to stretch every drop as far as it
will go becomes more important. Diesel costs the same or more than unleaded
yet offers big savings to the long-distance driver.

           Take Britain's bestseller, the Ford Focus, as a typical example.
In 1.6 litre form its petrol engine returns 42.2mpg on the combined cycle,
which may seem reasonable enough - until you start comparing it with the 1.6
litre diesel version, which will do 58.9mpg, and if you drive gently, 70mpg
should be possible. Oh, and the diesel has more power and gives stronger
performance too.

           However, this is but one of many reasons to explain the sudden
explosion of interest in diesel power. Another crucially significant factor
is that modern technologies, such as common rail and direct injection, have
transformed diesels, improving their refinement, response and power to a
point unthinkable even 10 years ago. BMW's most powerful 3 litre engine
offers 272bhp and is fired not by petrol but diesel. Moreover, fitted to the
535d, it will still return 35.7mpg, compared with the 29.7mpg of the less
powerful, slower, petrol-powered 530i.

           Diesels can also prove cheaper to maintain. Volkswagen reckons a
new Golf TDI PD will typically do 1,500 miles more than a 2.0 FSi petrol
before its service-due indicator flickers on. And when a major service is
due at about 40,000 miles, the diesel service is priced at £155.84 inclusive
of labour, compared with £206.99 for the petrol Golf.

           Then there are emissions. Diesels produce less carbon dioxide
than petrol engines and given that company car tax bills depend on such
things, we shouldn't be surprised that drivers in their thousands now opt to
fill from the black pump.

           Choose to run a new Audi A4 2 litre petrol and your tax bill
will be assessed on 24% of its price when new; opt instead for the 1.9 TDi
and you'll be assessed at 19%. To a high-rate taxpayer, that's an annual
saving of approximately £390, despite the fact that the diesel has a higher
list price.

           And it gets better the higher up the food chain you go. Try the
same experiment with S-class Mercedes and you'll discover that choosing an S
320CDi over an S 350 knocks the thick end of £2,000 off your tax bill. No
surprise, then, that the diesel S-class outsells all petrol variants of the
same model put together. What will open your eyes further is that the diesel
S-class is also nicer to drive.

           That's probably the biggest surprise waiting for those who join
the diesel revolution. Modern diesels are now so smooth and quiet they can
power luxury limousines that stand or fall on their refinement levels and
nobody on board would know what power source was feeding the engine. If they
did twig, it would probably be because diesels provide more low-down torque
than petrol engines, enabling diesels to produce a silken shove at engine
speeds that are often barely above idling for petrol cars.

           So diesels use less fuel, have better response, are cheaper to
run as a company car and will go further than any comparable petrol car on a
tank of fuel, reducing overall journey times by cutting the number of fuel
stops by up to a third. They attract lower levels of vehicle excise duty and
they can be just as refined as petrol cars. In the light of this, perhaps
the real question is why is anyone buying petrol cars?

           The answer is that buyers often have to pay a premium of about
£1,000 for a diesel-engined version of the equivalent petrol car. So while
the diesel will use less fuel, you have to work out how many thousands of
miles it will take to claw back your investment, bearing in mind also that
diesel costs slightly more per litre. The exception to this rule is at the
luxury end of the market where diesels are sometimes cheaper than their
petrol equivalents.

           Honda reckons you need to be clocking up 20,000 miles a year to
make buying its £18,600 Honda CR-V i-CTDi financially worthwhile compared
with the £17,200 petrol CR-V 2.0. The diesel CR-V costs more, says Honda,
"because the engine is more complicated and has more components". Unlike the
petrol CR-V, it also has a standard six-speed gearbox.

                       Some manufacturers still keep price differentials to
a minimum. The Skoda Octavia 1.6 FSI is £13,540, while the equivalent 1.9
TDI costs just £260 more and is capable of 13mpg extra. Not surprisingly,
sales are tipped 70-30 in favour of diesel.
                       However, in the case of smaller cars, which are
inherently economical to begin with, diesel is nothing like as popular and
80% of orders for the Skoda Fabia are for petrol models.

                       Life in diesel-land is not all sunshine and blue
skies, then. One dark cloud has appeared on the horizon in the form of the
chancellor's decision to reimpose the 3% benefit in kind company car tax
surcharge levied on all diesel cars not compliant with the latest Euro IV
emissions standard. This was waived for all cars that were Euro IV compliant
in advance of the deadline but as all diesel cars have to conform by the end
of the year, the chancellor has deemed the waiver an incentive that is no
longer necessary. Expect a stampede for 2005 diesels in the last few months
of the year.

                       Also, some pundits have predicted that prestige
brand diesels will suffer a fall in residual values as the market becomes
oversupplied by diesel stock. However, according to analysis by price
watchdogs at Glass's, the premiums being paid for used diesel cars over
petrol-engined equivalents are still on the increase.

                       Using the BMW 5-series as an example, Glass's says a
two-year-old 530d (diesel) automatic will by now have lost £6,905 from its
original £34,555 list price. Compare that with the £8,830 drop in value
suffered by a 530i (petrol) automatic of the same age, which cost £33,305
new.

                       So despite the best efforts of No 11, the expansion
in diesel's popularity appears set to continue. And one thing seems sure:
the days when people only bought diesels for their economy are gone for
good.

                       FIVE MODELS SETTING THE PACE AT THE BLACK PUMP

                       BESTSELLER
                       The Ford Focus TDCi - the ubiquitous family car -
has just been overhauled, providing a range of super-frugal diesels to
choose from

                       CHEAPEST
                       Fiat's cute Panda Multijet is a steal at just
£7,895. The new 1.3 turbo diesel is cheaper than both the Renault Clio and
                       Citroën C2

                       FASTEST
                       The BMW 535d will show any diesel doubters what a
performance saloon can do: 0-62mph in 6.5sec and lashings of mid-range
torque for overtaking too

                       MOST ECONOMICAL
                       There is hot competition for this title but if you
want sparkling mpg performance the Citroën C2 1.4 HDi will squeeze 68.9mpg
out of a gallon

                       MOST LUXURIOUS
                       Over and above the Range Rover 3.0 Td6 and Mercedes
S 320 CDI, the £61,970 Audi A8 4.0 TDI long wheelbase is the most expensive
diesel on the market