Sylvain wrote:
Morgans wrote:
"Mike Rapoport" wrote
modern European deisel automobile engines are not seen in the US
Why is that?

Beats me, one of these things that only someone in
marketting can understand I suppose :-), may be the
same reason why you can't buy in USA cars with reasonable
gas mileage even though they are widely available
elsewhere -- i.e., there are cars out there, with
conventional gas engines which beat the gas mileage
(real life numbers not marketting hype) of the overhyped
hybrids and with decent performance (actually a heck of a
lot more fun to drive than what's available here); Even
manufacturers that do make such cars and do have a presence
in USA do not sell these models here. I suppose
they know what they are doing, but I am still puzzled.
I did write once to Peugeot (never expecting an
answer) asking them why I couldn't buy their products
over here and got a nice answer (to my surprise,
it was not a canned answer and someone went through
the trouble of addressing the points I was making)
explaining things a bit (apparently they prefer to go
after 'emerging' markets which have better growth
potentials); may be also a cultural thing, folks
here like gaz guzzling big engines even to commute
at 55 mph... what do I know, I am just a bloody
foreigner :-))

the funny thing is that now that I live in California,
even with gas retail prices only a fraction of what
is available in Europe (even today), I still end
up spending more on gas than I was in Europe (gaz
guzzling piece of junk that cannot do better than
26 mpg combined with much longer commute distances)

--Sylvain

You do see some European diesel engines in the US, but they are not the
same ones they use in Europe. That is because the US lead Europe in
cleaning up gasoline engines and their fuel, but nothing for diesel's.
The European's have caught up to us and have now past us and included
diesel engines. They have cleaned up the diesel fuel, that is take out
the sulfur, and won't run on our dirty fuel.