The cheaper diesel on the continent is a massive help for you oil burners! I think the UK keep the prices high by not processing enough diesel, thus restricting supply and keeping the price up. With those prices even I could not justify having a petrol. I wonder what the reason for the price differential there is. Just watched a Fith Gear program where they were testing side by side the diesel Mini and the petrol one, they found that when driven enthusiastically the diesel only gave 1 more mpg than the petrol.
My mum and dad are touring Scotland in their T4 Syncro 102 TDi. They got 24 mpg for the towing up to Aberdeenshire, and now 33mpg solo pootling. He has a 100,000 mile fuel consumption record which averages at 27.6mpg. Mind his engine was a £2500 option over the 5 pot petrol (iirc) He has also needed a new turbo at over a grand fitted.
If V-lux remembers the A361 drive back from Syncrospares i think my DJ had the legs on the AAZ on the hills.
I probably come over as hating diesel's, but I can see the benefit, and as Jed said you gotta have the engine that suits your purpose, my mainly main road bashing suits the DJ just fine, plus I am tied to them by an umbilical cord, as I have had the (mis)fortune to have always had a flat four dub, right from childhood in South Africa in a splitty, then a variant, then bays, 5 T25's including two syncro's before I even left home. I guess I am apologising for coming across all anti diesel, but I cant help loving the flat four, it's what makes the syncro a syncro to me. It gives the dub character, and I have found that I have never been restricted by any quirk of the flat four. With standard wheels for the gearbox G is always enough for me. Having this attachment to the flat four makes me probably unreasonably defensive of it.
