Jetta TDI wagon blows-away SUV hybrids

Fixed it for you. That article is more than four years old, rather dated in a market where many vehicles are on a four or five or six year redesign cycle.

That is just one episode of this 'Smackdown' series. It and others have been brought up in prior threads:
(edmunds.com) Fuel Sipper Smackdown 2
New Kia Optima Hybrid commercial claims 40mpg AND 206hp!
Honda Accord Hybrid: 50 MPG City - clone Toyota
Comparison Test: 2009 Toyota Prius vs. 2009 Volkswagen Jetta TDI

 

Our 1999 VW NewBeetle TDI got exceptional fuel mileage and range. Our 2006 VW NewBeetle TDI replacement got OK fuel mileage and less range. Anyone considering a diesel, needs to factor in the high cost of diesel fuel vs regular unleaded (+40 cents). I see plenty of newer VW Passant TDIs on the road with a reported 795 mile per tank range. Factor in the 19.5 gallon fuel tank and high cost of diesel fuel before saying WOW.

 

A five year old article featuring a car that won't last five years without a four-figure repair bill.


No thanks!

 

Cassette tapes used to be popular back then too.
Station wagons are only popular in a world without SUVs.
Mostly it's visibility, but SUVs are also easier to get into and out of for some people, which is why you have today's "not an SUV" crossovers.

The good news for the eco-nerds is that CAFE standards will probably encourage some auto makers to revisit the wagon thing.

 

Cassettes had better sound until they left in the car on a hot summer's day.

 

I drove Rabbit Diesels back in the '80s and miss them -- 48-55 mpg, good range, accessory tanks available (fit into the spare tire space) and maintenance was cheap. So was Diesel, back then - usually the same price or less than Unleaded.

I don't know what they're doing to the new formulations to justify the price - used to be that diesel required less processing than gasoline.

 

Wagons/estates are still very popular in Europe. SUV's are heavily promoted by manufacturers in the US because these vehicles have a very large profit margins. Removal of wagons from US market, means more SUV sales.

 

I learned to drive stick on a friend's diesel Rabbit.
Diesel still requires less processing than gasoline in the US. The lower sulfur limits added some to the price, but global demand is likely the main driver for higher prices. We are exporting diesel to Europe now. I don't think we did so back in the '80s, and may have had an over supply of the fuel then.

 

At that time, SUVs had comparatively lax safety standards too, helping boost that profit margin.

 

The article is severely confused by rating a non-SUV with SUV's to find the best SUV... It is like saying the best apple you can buy at the store, is an orange. The Ford Escape Hybrid seems to be the actual winner in raw MPGs in a test that makes sense. Put the 7seater Prius V into the lineup and it will win. Similar but better mpg numbers for the V all with the added benefit of lower cost fuel and lower energy dense fuel making it win by a lot.

And to that point the Jetta when converted to a similar baseline as the Escape, not just "miles per gallon of any fuel type", gets just shy of 37mpg-of-petrol and the Beamer gets just over 24mpg.

Delusional...

Take some time to study the math behind the Nyquist Sampling Theorem. If you sample a continuous source at at least twice the maximum frequency into discrete measurements, you can always reproduce the signal of a bandlimited function. Like sound... Give it enough bits of resolution for every sample, and there is no difference between the original and the output. This is just math. Anyone who claims vinyl or a cassette sounds better, is truly ignorant of math and physics.

 

Even if something is lost in the compression, it was something the human ear couldn't perceive anyway.

 

If you Google for Troy Heavy, again he has haunted hybrid and EV sites but also a few forums on sound systems.

Draw your own conclusions.

 

Indeed. Given the size of most of the hybrid SUVs there, the valid comparison would be with a VW Touareg TDI. And I imagine that that would not win.

 

I miss seeing streamers of cassette tape stuck to crash barriers, glistening in the sunlight and blowing in the wind after they'd been chewed up by the tape player and thrown out of the window. They were so pretty. You just don't get that with a USB stick.

I miss seeing broken-down Rovers, Austins and Triumphs by the side of the road too, with steam coming out of them, and a frustrated man in a brown jumper a few hundred metres further on, walking along the road in the rain to find a phone so he could call for a breakdown truck. But it's all gone now, thanks to stupid reliable Toyotas and stupid convenient mobile phones. Mobile phones just don't have that warmth of tone that you used to get from a payphone in the rain.

I hate progress.

 

Are there any sound system forum banishments to complement the automotive forum banishments?

 

I forgot, but the behavior seems very consistent to me

Got a PM I ignored from him

If he ever decides to behave like a real enthusiast, I might talk to him

Until then, I occasionally talk about him to everyone EXECPT TH