Thoughts about my next car
I have pretty much made a decision about my next car. But before I go into details: some background. I have had 6 cars since 1998, from 5 different manufacturers: two petrol and four diesel. I bought my current car, a Ford Focus with a small turbo diesel lump up front, just over eighteen months ago and I made a conscious decision at that point to buy a nearly-new diesel with the intention of keeping it for five or six years. Whether I keep it for that long is now in doubt. Don't get me wrong, I really like the Focus. It is quiet, comfortable and has sufficient toys and gadgets to keep my inner geek happy, but how it is powered is giving me serious food for thought. The decision to buy diesel boiled down to higher mpg/lower CO2: the EuroV engines were supposed to be clean, certainly compared to the filthy things you could buy 20 years ago, when diesel sales in the UK were way behind those on the continent. But perceptions have changed recently. The VW emissions scandal has cast ...