Why, in this day and age where diesel engines and cars are becoming more refined, do manufacturers still put the letter "D" on the back of the car to signify it is a diesel?
You never see cars with a P for petrol - so why the sticky D?
Thanks,
Graham
Good point! And given that all new cars have had fuel-injection of some form for at least the last 10 years, why does anyone still bother with the "I" or "Injection" labels?
You take it for granted that it's a petrol unless there's a D on it.
Rob Graham
To warn anyone following of the imminent arrival of clouds of black smoke when the driver puts his foot down ?
Many manufacturers seem to have dropped the "i" on petrol model designations.
You mean it was a £1.52 dealer option to remove the pointless badges on the back? I never knew why any car has the badges on, who cares if you have a LS, CD or what ever.
Will
Pride at being sparkless!
My 206 SW came minus the HDi badge on the tailgate - £1.52 sorted that!
Why badges at all?
I agree. Just removed the ones on the back of my Clio. Not so keen on doing the bonnet badge as it would involve filler and a spray.
It was somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember "Will Reeve" saying something like:
Heh. A friend of mine was so incensed at the sheer temerity of manufacturers leaving their insignia on items he went round his house removing makers' badges on everything he could find.
He was a bit of a loony, though.
The message from Grimly Curmudgeon contains these words:
Manufacturers are bad enough, but when some bloody car dealer tattoos his logo on the bootlid I'm afraid I'd start expecting very large discounts. Cheeky sods.
And the gummermint ain't a lot better, insisting that licence plates have the makers' name on 'em.
Funnily enough, in Spain (at least Madrid), they don't seem to.
I didn't see _any_ Mondeos with any sort of real "spec" identifier. They had "Mondeo" and the majority had "TDCI" (drool), but the concept of LX, Zetec, Ghia, Ghia X etc seems totally alien to them.
Perhaps they just specify what they want, rather than having pre-defined spec levels.
Pete.
The message from "Mr John X" contains these words:
Then they can stuff their effing stickers!
Still - I'm not likely to buy a new car so what do I care.
CD? How many people have Vauxhall fooled with that badge?
-- Peter Hill Spamtrap reply domain as per NNTP-Posting-Host in header Can of worms - what every fisherman wants. Can of worms - what every PC owner gets!
The message from Johannes H Andersen contains these words:
Warm setting on a hot air gun and they come off easily.
Badges stem from the repmobile status when different trim levels defined your pecking order in the company car park!
I wanted to but a HDi badge on mine because, as others have said if it doesn't have a D badge it must be a petrol, and I didn't want the shame of people thinking I was driving a petrol! :-)
With regard to the dealer stickers. My mother in law recently purchased a new C3 from her local dealer who managed to match the cheapest internet price I could find. When she came to leave with the new car the salesman suddenly realised that there was no rear window sticker. He apologised and said he had to stick one on or he would be fined £20 for letting a new car leave the premises without the sticker.
My mother in law didn't object because she reasoned that she could remove it afterwards, but in fact she decided to leave it on in case anyone thought she had bought a "cheap import." I accused her of being a snob, and she argued that she had worked very hard for the past 45 years for the right to be a snob. As she's the mother in law she must be right!
My biggest regret with the new cleaner diesel engines and low sulphur fuels is the loss of the smoke bomb effect when passing cyclists riding three abreast on narrow roads!
Even the Turbo labels have been dropped on many petrol turbo cars (Saab). Most silly is Mercedes long designation 'Kompressor', filling up half of the width of the boot. Mind you, I once has a FIAT 132 that proudly announced: 5 Speed!
However, there may be a point of marking out diesel cars to avoid fuel filling mistakes. Since most diesel cars arrived later than the petrol models, it's the diesels that have to be specially marked out.
Modern diesels can be refined, but not all of them are. A car without the 'D' is just trying to think it's a petrol, but you can't change nature.
The problem is that if you don't remove that rear window sticker pretty soon when new, it gets permanently attached.
The other day I had the sheer joy of seeing an old Montenogo 2.0D Turbo. The guy had the cheek to boot it while I was overtaking! The clue? He COMPLETELY disappeared in a cloud of black smoke. Those were the days....sigh! Sadly he probably didn't even appreciate he'd been overtaken by a diesel as I blasted past in my Alfa 156 2.4JTD..no smoke..probably not much noise either (thanks to European bureaucrats !).
Heh Heh! Did take me back to when guys at work used to boast of
*deliberately* smoking adversaries in these things though! Used to have competitions to see who could produce enough smoke so they couldn't see who was following in their rear view mirrors.MotorsForum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.