Since the advent of a process called catalytic cracking they can make heavy fuels into light ones, but not the other way around.
Gasoline was a byproduct of kerosene, in effect, until the mid-1920s, not the
1960s. Gasolines drove the fuels market because private cars were all gasoline burning. Higher (LPG) and lower (kerosenes, diesels, heating oils and lubricating oil stocks) were byproducts. The increase in diesel demand and the mass consumption of kerosenes by air carrier aviation have evened out the demand.
Today all oil products are in continuous and rising demand. There just isn't any cheap product out there.
The Europeans have gone diesel in a big way and rightly so because they generate less total volume of pollutant gases, and give very much better economy. This is because as Carnot predicted the higher the differential of heat the more efficient a heat engine is. That's why steam has been pretty well run out of business everywhere except where fired by a reactor or by some cheap random burnable such as coals or trash. Natural Gas and heavy oils are much more efficiently burned in piston internal combustion engines or in split cycle (steam/gas turbine) plants.
We've established Mr Hughes has no interest in the environment per se, else he'd be behind Clunker Junker.
The very belated introduction of the excellent and proven VM common rail high pressure diesel is a very good thing even if it's not in the platform I'd buy. Historically Mercedes engines have been better than the American pushrod ones in terms of TBO and sudden failures...but the parts are a lot higher.