Diesel AWD car recommendation?

[Demo24]

And the Audi is a wagon and AWD to boot.

Audi website says TDI is FWD only, otherwise that would be a great choice for the OP.

http://configurator.vw.com/ihdcc/configurator.html#10003
VW Golf 4 door gasoline - $19,755
VW Golf 4 door diesel - $23,885
And just like a hybrid, that more expensive diesel has less power :awe:
(gas is 170HP, diesel is 140HP).

They make less HP, but far more torque which is more usable. And once you get them going, damn! Friend of mine has a couple TDI's, even the previous gen 1.8 with like 100hp pulled impressively well on the highway.

And the BMW one has 400lb/ft of torque. Nearly as fast as the 335i, and I would suspect very impressive for passing performance.

 

[JCH13]

I have a 2009 VW Jetta TDi and am very happy with the mileage, diesel availability and performance. The only thing is, is that I live in New England and driving around a front wheel drive car sucks sometimes. I have 14 months left on my lease and would like somethign like a Subaru AWD car but with a diesel.

For what it's worth I've lived in New England my whole life and my family has never owned anything other than a 2wd vehicle (FWD and RWD) and never had much of an issue. None of us have gotten stuck, crashed, or been prevented from driving where we needed to get. All you need are some good snow tires and maybe a limited slip differential and you'll be fine.

http://configurator.vw.com/ihdcc/configurator.html#10003
VW Golf 4 door gasoline - $19,755
VW Golf 4 door diesel - $23,885
And just like a hybrid, that more expensive diesel has less power :awe:
(gas is 170HP, diesel is 140HP).

You realize, of course, that 23,885-19,755=4,130!=5,000, right?

They also come in at different base trim levels...

 

[NetWareHead]

Audi website says TDI is FWD only, otherwise that would be a great choice for the OP.

Yep, when u opt for the TDi, you lose the Quattro on the A3. Otherwise I would be all over that. Shame they dont make it with manual tranny though...

 

[ShawnD1]

Yet it makes more torque...a lot more (177lb-ft for the gas engine, 236lb-ft for the diesel).

But as we've gone over this before, the torque means nothing. Actually it means less than nothing because if it were nothing people would just ignore it. Right now, it's worse than nothing because people assume it's important when it's actually nothing.

Let's look at a real problem that I have with a real car then compare how the diesel and gasoline cars will tackle this problem. It doesn't matter what my car is, but know that its major performance downfall is passing on the highway. I can't pass on the highway due to lack of acceleration, so the question is which car would accelerate faster: the diesel or the gasoline? We'll assume no drive train loss since it should be about the same for both cars. I think power wins, other people think torque wins, so we'll compare the two and see what happens. Gasoline engine is 170HP at 5700rpm (torque doesn't matter), the diesel engine is 236lbft at 2500rpm (power doesn't matter).

A gasoline engine's strong point is power. They don't have torque, but they have lots of power, so we'll calculate how much torque can be applied to the wheels when the car is running at max power.
Base formula is power = (torque) * (rpm) / 5252
170HP = torque * (5700rpm) / 5252
torque = 156.6 lb-ft from the engine into the transmission

That should settle the argument right there shouldn't it? The gasoline has 156 and the diesel is well over 200, so diesel wins, right? Not so fast. Cars have transmissions, so the diesel and gasoline transmissions will have wildly different gear ratios. Since both cars have the same size tires, let's say the output from the transmission needs to spin at 2000rpm to maintain the speed we are going. We know what the input speed and input torque are for both engines, so we can figure out how much output torque we get.
gasoline: 156.6lbft * 5700rpm intput / 2000rpm output = 446.31 output torque
diesel: 236fbft * 2500rpm input / 2000rpm output = 235 output torque??


Any way you try to spin the numbers, the gasoline engine always delivers more torque to the wheels. In a straight drag race from 50mph to 100mph to pass a semi or something like that, the gasoline engine will win every single time.

 

[chucky2]

http://configurator.vw.com/ihdcc/configurator.html#10003
VW Golf 4 door gasoline - $19,755
VW Golf 4 door diesel - $23,885
And just like a hybrid, that more expensive diesel has less power :awe:
(gas is 170HP, diesel is 140HP).

Not really. This year instead of the TDI saying "everything the SEL plus..." it says SE. That indeed has changed. However, when you do a compare of the SEL against the TDI, you see that they're essentially the same, the give or take is around equal. For example, I'd much rather have the standard moonroof of the TDI than the standard foglights of the SEL. However, the SEL does come with a power drivers seat, TDI is manual option on power. Base SEL comes with a 5-spd manual, base TDI comes with a 6-spd manual.

Basically you're comparing a $21,395 SEL vs. a $22,995 TDI if you want to compare essentially equal base models, which is a $1600 difference. I'll take the drivability of the TDI, along with the vastly better mpg, anyday, for $1600. What no one in their right mind should be willing to take however is VW's insane quality/design issues. Paying $10k for a HPFP issue they're having in their latest design TDI's is insane. Worse, just because you have it fixed once, doesn't mean it can't/won't happen again. Possibly multiple times. Until VW owns up to that issue, that issue alone makes getting a TDI an insane purchase decision for all but the most die hard diesel fans.

As for the power comment, I'm not sure if you understand or not that the diesel has a large amount of torque, and that torque is available basically everywhere you'll have the rpm at during normal driving. For a normal everyday driver, a Jetta TDI walks all over the gasser Jetta (and I'd suspect a Hybrid even more so).

Chuck

 

[Demo24]

Yep, when u opt for the TDi, you lose the Quattro on the A3. Otherwise I would be all over that. Shame they dont make it with manual tranny though...

Wish we didn't get stiffed on so many diesel models here in the states.

I wonder if the A3 comes with a LSD on the TDI? That might help some, or does the Jetta already have one?

 

[chucky2]

I think Audi has said they'll be bringing TDI to more of their lineup for 2012 (or maybe it was 2013?), which translates into a greater chance of being able to get a TDI Quattro. OP, I'd wait until the last month or so of your lease to start making decisions on your lease replacement. Could be by then you'll have a 2013 Audi TDI Quattro option available. Unfortunately, VAG thinks their vehicles are worth some amazing prices, so a setup like that will be priced accordingly...

Chuck

 

[JulesMaximus]

But as we've gone over this before, the torque means nothing. Actually it means less than nothing because if it were nothing people would just ignore it. Right now, it's worse than nothing because people assume it's important when it's actually nothing.

Let's look at a real problem that I have with a real car then compare how the diesel and gasoline cars will tackle this problem. It doesn't matter what my car is, but know that its major performance downfall is passing on the highway. I can't pass on the highway due to lack of acceleration, so the question is which car would accelerate faster: the diesel or the gasoline? We'll assume no drive train loss since it should be about the same for both cars. I think power wins, other people think torque wins, so we'll compare the two and see what happens. Gasoline engine is 170HP at 5700rpm (torque doesn't matter), the diesel engine is 236lbft at 2500rpm (power doesn't matter).

A gasoline engine's strong point is power. They don't have torque, but they have lots of power, so we'll calculate how much torque can be applied to the wheels when the car is running at max power.
Base formula is power = (torque) * (rpm) / 5252
170HP = torque * (5700rpm) / 5252
torque = 156.6 lb-ft from the engine into the transmission

That should settle the argument right there shouldn't it? The gasoline has 156 and the diesel is well over 200, so diesel wins, right? Not so fast. Cars have transmissions, so the diesel and gasoline transmissions will have wildly different gear ratios. Since both cars have the same size tires, let's say the output from the transmission needs to spin at 2000rpm to maintain the speed we are going. We know what the input speed and input torque are for both engines, so we can figure out how much output torque we get.
gasoline: 156.6lbft * 5700rpm intput / 2000rpm output = 446.31 output torque
diesel: 236fbft * 2500rpm input / 2000rpm output = 235 output torque??


Any way you try to spin the numbers, the gasoline engine always delivers more torque to the wheels. In a straight drag race from 50mph to 100mph to pass a semi or something like that, the gasoline engine will win every single time.

Quoted for stupidity.

Put 4 adults and some luggage in your gas car and then do the same comparison. Torque does matter genius.

 

[JulesMaximus]

Audi website says TDI is FWD only, otherwise that would be a great choice for the OP.

I was reading Edmunds.com and thought it said the TDI was AWD. I must have misread it or they misprinted it.

 

[JCH13]

But as we've gone over this before, the torque means nothing. Actually it means less than nothing because if it were nothing people would just ignore it. Right now, it's worse than nothing because people assume it's important when it's actually nothing.

Let's look at a real problem that I have with a real car then compare how the diesel and gasoline cars will tackle this problem. It doesn't matter what my car is, but know that its major performance downfall is passing on the highway. I can't pass on the highway due to lack of acceleration, so the question is which car would accelerate faster: the diesel or the gasoline? We'll assume no drive train loss since it should be about the same for both cars. I think power wins, other people think torque wins, so we'll compare the two and see what happens. Gasoline engine is 170HP at 5700rpm (torque doesn't matter), the diesel engine is 236lbft at 2500rpm (power doesn't matter).

A gasoline engine's strong point is power. They don't have torque, but they have lots of power, so we'll calculate how much torque can be applied to the wheels when the car is running at max power.
Base formula is power = (torque) * (rpm) / 5252
170HP = torque * (5700rpm) / 5252
torque = 156.6 lb-ft from the engine into the transmission

That should settle the argument right there shouldn't it? The gasoline has 156 and the diesel is well over 200, so diesel wins, right? Not so fast. Cars have transmissions, so the diesel and gasoline transmissions will have wildly different gear ratios. Since both cars have the same size tires, let's say the output from the transmission needs to spin at 2000rpm to maintain the speed we are going. We know what the input speed and input torque are for both engines, so we can figure out how much output torque we get.
gasoline: 156.6lbft * 5700rpm intput / 2000rpm output = 446.31 output torque
diesel: 236fbft * 2500rpm input / 2000rpm output = 235 output torque??


Any way you try to spin the numbers, the gasoline engine always delivers more torque to the wheels. In a straight drag race from 50mph to 100mph to pass a semi or something like that, the gasoline engine will win every single time.

D:
:thumbsdown:

Classic ShawnD1:
1) Make wild, incorrect, assertion
2) Get numbers
3) Do math to numbers
4) Make fake results that don't mean anything
5) Claim to be right

Honestly, making the statement "torque does not matter" is just so dumb I can't even believe you made it.

 

[PhoKingGuy]

Quoted for stupidity.

Put 4 adults and some luggage in your gas car and then do the same comparison. Torque does matter genius.

Yeah hes on crack. I own a 2010 Jetta TDI.

Its hard to drive any other small engined gasser car now, the very apparent lack of torque is incredibly annoying. Hell even my parent's V6 I30 feels slow now off the line. My car is amazing on hills, the engine just upshifts and stays around 2500 rpm as I fly up the grapevine passing everything at like 80 mph. Diesel engines are great for general all around driving.

 

[PhoKingGuy]

I was reading Edmunds.com and thought it said the TDI was AWD. I must have misread it or they misprinted it.

Yeah the TDI is FWD only sadly for the US market. You can get it with AWD in europe though.

There was someone on TDIclub transplanting a salvaged R32 Haldex into the back end of an MKV Jetta TDI. I don't know if he was ever able to do it though.

 

[ShawnD1]

Quoted for stupidity.

Put 4 adults and some luggage in your gas car and then do the same comparison. Torque does matter genius.

I do that all the time. Drop 1 gear. Problem solved.

What makes me such an incredible driver is how I can switch gears like that. Normal drivers who don't have a background in post graduate mathematics would try to start the car in fifth gear from a dead stop then complain about how a car needs 400lb-ft of torque and a V8 to haul more than 2 people. This is why my 4-banger piece of shit with a transmission is able to pass V6 and V8 cars on hills. I use gear 2 going up the hill. They use whatever the top gear is then pray the engine doesn't stall.

 

[JulesMaximus]

I do that all the time. Drop 1 gear. Problem solved.

What makes me such an incredible driver is how I can switch gears like that. Normal drivers who don't have a background in post graduate mathematics would try to start the car in fifth gear from a dead stop then complain about how a car needs 400lb-ft of torque and a V8 to haul more than 2 people. This is why my 4-banger piece of shit with a transmission is able to pass V6 and V8 cars on hills. I use gear 2 going up the hill. They use whatever the top gear is then pray the engine doesn't stall.

Um...okay. Not sure I even want to dignify that with a response...I'll just leave it alone and assume you've been drinking and/or smoking crack all afternoon.

 

[fbrdphreak]

I do that all the time. Drop 1 gear. Problem solved.

What makes me such an incredible driver is how I can switch gears like that. Normal drivers who don't have a background in post graduate mathematics would try to start the car in fifth gear from a dead stop then complain about how a car needs 400lb-ft of torque and a V8 to haul more than 2 people. This is why my 4-banger piece of shit with a transmission is able to pass V6 and V8 cars on hills. I use gear 2 going up the hill. They use whatever the top gear is then pray the engine doesn't stall.

Jesus christ, you are one pretentious asshole aren't you.

 

[ShawnD1]

Jesus christ, you are one pretentious asshole aren't you.

Indeed! I'm pretentious enough to not let it go when I'm trying to spread the word about this amazing device called a transmission.

Remember when Top Gear did a gasoline vs diesel test for the BMW 5? The diesel had quite a bit more torque. The gasoline had more power. On the initial part of the test when they're accelerating in a straight line, the gasoline engine easily pulls away from the diesel.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fU4f_NwAfUs

 

[InflatableBuddha]

Even if he said all cities in North America where it snows he would be wrong. Denver, CO is fairly flat, Des Moines, IA is pretty flat too.

Shit, maybe even some Canadian cities in the Prairies such as Winnipeg, Regina or Saskatoon where it regularly hits -20 to -40 C every winter :hmm:.

 

[JCH13]

Indeed! I'm pretentious enough to not let it go when I'm trying to spread the word about this amazing device called a transmission.

Remember when Top Gear did a gasoline vs diesel test for the BMW 5? The diesel had quite a bit more torque. The gasoline had more power. On the initial part of the test when they're accelerating in a straight line, the gasoline engine easily pulls away from the diesel.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fU4f_NwAfUs

The Stig could out-drive Clarkson in anything. The fact that he did it with a gas-powered 5 doesn't mean that the gas-powered 5 is faster than the diesel 5.

 

[Demo24]

I do that all the time. Drop 1 gear. Problem solved.

What makes me such an incredible driver is how I can switch gears like that. Normal drivers who don't have a background in post graduate mathematics would try to start the car in fifth gear from a dead stop then complain about how a car needs 400lb-ft of torque and a V8 to haul more than 2 people. This is why my 4-banger piece of shit with a transmission is able to pass V6 and V8 cars on hills. I use gear 2 going up the hill. They use whatever the top gear is then pray the engine doesn't stall.

I just..I...

 

[Demo24]

The Stig could out-drive Clarkson in anything. The fact that he did it with a gas-powered 5 doesn't mean that the gas-powered 5 is faster than the diesel 5.

The diesel ones are quicker from a roll in say 30-70 range. Apparently if you chip them they haul serious ass .


You can make diesels fast (Ie, the diesel race cars that have been doing very well the past couple of years), but on the street their designed for efficiency. Thus the low gearing making it hard to start off super fast. Once you get them going its a bit better. I was reading the only difference between the 335d and 335i with auto trans is the rear dif ratio being over twice as tall! I bet if you kept everything the same it would fly to 60, but would probably top out not much farther from it.

 

[ShawnD1]

The Stig could out-drive Clarkson in anything. The fact that he did it with a gas-powered 5 doesn't mean that the gas-powered 5 is faster than the diesel 5.

Now there's a world first. You're saying that driving in a STRAIGHT LINE is difficult and that's why the gasoline car is faster. That's just awesome :thumbsup:

 

[yh125d]

Yeah hes on crack. I own a 2010 Jetta TDI.

Its hard to drive any other small engined gasser car now, the very apparent lack of torque is incredibly annoying. Hell even my parent's V6 I30 feels slow now off the line. My car is amazing on hills, the engine just upshifts and stays around 2500 rpm as I fly up the grapevine passing everything at like 80 mph. Diesel engines are great for general all around driving.

You have to downshift in normal highway driving?

I didn't even downshift when I passed 3 cars at once yesterday

 

[ShawnD1]

You have to downshift in normal highway driving?

I didn't even downshift when I passed 3 cars at once yesterday

He said it was on a hill going 80mph. That sounds about right. It really depends how steep the hill is.

 

[Howard]

D:
:thumbsdown:

Classic ShawnD1:
1) Make wild, incorrect, assertion
2) Get numbers
3) Do math to numbers
4) Make fake results that don't mean anything
5) Claim to be right

Honestly, making the statement "torque does not matter" is just so dumb I can't even believe you made it.

Shawn is sort of correct, but he's really stupid, so his argument sucks balls. But, if you make a bunch of assumptions, one of them being that both engines are at peak power at the given RPMs and that the other numbers are correct, then the gas engine has more than 1.5x the accelerating capability in that particular situation (without tire slippage and other mitigating factors).

 

[ShawnD1]

Shawn is sort of correct, but he's really stupid, so his argument sucks balls.

I used an unfair comparison because that was the whole argument. If we agreed that power was the deciding factor in acceleration, then we would only look at power, which is what I originally said. These guys were saying I'm wrong and that power is not as important as torque, so I compared the peak of one to the peak of the other. The gasoline engine is all power and no torque, so I used the power numbers. The diesel is all torque and no power, so I went with the torque numbers.

The mistake that every person makes is forgetting that cars have transmissions. If the gasoline engine is spinning 3x as fast as the diesel engine but the shaft going to the wheels is the same for both cars, then you would say the gasoline engine is connected to a transmission that multiplies torque by a factor of 3, relative to the diesel. If a diesel is operating at max torque around 2000 while a gasoline engine is operating at max power at 6000, then it really is as simple as multiplying by 3. Diesel would be about ~250 x 1 = 250, but the gasoline would be ~150 * 3 = 450
It's really not that hard. I remember doing these calculations in grade 8. It was the unit about simple machines. Levers. Gears. Pully systems. Cross multiplying.

I would like to think I'm being an asshole by pointing out things that everyone already knows (ie it's easier to go up hills when using a lower gear), but now I'm not too sure that everyone really knows these things. I said a gasoline car has lots of torque at the wheels when it's in a lower gear and JulesMaximus responds by implying that this is no longer true when the car has people in it. I think that was intended as a joke, but I'm not entirely sure.