Well... how hypocritical am I???

5 speed.

Think 306 XSi, but with half sensible economy. :-)

Juicy when you thrash them, mind... at least in diesel terms.

Been thinking about them myself. Do they have the 5 or 6 speed box?

I do quite like them. I wonder if you mate a GTi6 box upto the diesel and stir the pot a little more.

My Ex wife has one, not a bad motor at all. Handles nicely, bit of lift off oversteer if you're brutal with it (like a 205 Gti, but not as bad!), 45+mpg normal driving, but at 95+ it'll use a full tank travelling from London to Manchester, so it's no better than a 2-litre petrol mondeo... I borrowed it for a week but I got bored after about 3 days because i'd been driving around in a Saab 900 T16 prior to that...

Mike

I really want another Saab, but I'm trying to find something either as fun/tweakable, or solidly built as a Saab, buyt about half the size.

Really have to keep the missus happy and find something that won't leave oil stains on the drive.

Under the thumb?

Mine doesn't worry about oil stains and stuff - I taught her that very early in our relationship when I dumped the contents of her Fester's sump all over the communal car park outside our first flat.

Sort of. Sometimes it makes for an easy life.

Oh that has happened. First time she thought it funny. But as the puddles and drips get smaller, the frowns and groans get bigger and louder.

She wants me to have a car small enough park in matchbox, but be big enough to take a load to the tip, be thrifty enough to only need filling once a month, but decent enough for the motorway. Be cheap enough that I can afford it, but be new enough that it never ever needs fixing and can run it's whole life without any kind of servicing.

That is the kind of car she wants me to have.

Well... is it really worth all that aggro, gearing wise - tweaking the fuelling will get the desired effect, up to a point, without major works having to be carried out.

That is... until it goes bang. ;)

If you remember back, this is exactly what a certain ex-poster did to a Mondeo that used to be mine, amongst other vegetable based sins, both on the part of said poster, and the, ahem, 'fuels' he was using. ;0)

It's a cheap to run stopgap that happens to look quite nice - think it has

306 GTi-6 alloys on it as well. :-)

Aye, as we both know, VAG TDIs are *much* better, economy-wise, when thrashed, compared to their French counterparts.

Talking of diesels being thrashed - that 535d on Top Gear last night managed

12mpg on the track. Not bad, when compared to the Ford GT's 4mpg!

Um, that sounds *too* juicy. I know a guy with one, cains the f*ck out of it everywhere, and still gets 45mpg....

Parking the car on the road? :-)

I'm only having this as a stopgap, whilst I raise the rest of the money to buy my Golf TDI back. :-)

Indeed!

Peter

Yeah, yeah... and now the two cars line up before you.

What's your choice for the night?

Tom -no contest!- De Moor

Good man! Mine too! ;-)

TDM

Oh, the diesel? Didn't think that'd be your thing. :-)

Peter

But the 306 DTurbo on an L-Plate is using the oldy 1.9TD. Isn't the French counterpart to the VAG TDi, the HDi ?

Not really - the 90bhp 1.9 TDi came out on an M, in 1995, in VW terms. I believe it first appeared in the Audi 80 in 1993.

If anything, the HDI lumps are comparable to the 'PD' TDI lumps, also 1.9, and which came out sometime around 2000, IIRC.

Sort of. The old-style TDs were a turbocharged indirect injection diesel, the TDI a turbocharged direct injection diesel, and the HDIs a turbocharged commonrail injection diesel (direct injection but higher pressure and more powerful and economical, in theory). But since the HDI came out (around

1999?), VW since brought out the PD TDI, which is much more of an equivalent to the HDI than the older TDIs, and ISTR reading some literature somewhere that said that the fuel runs at "higher pressure than some commonrail systems".

So, in short, the VAG PD TDI is more of an equivalent to the HDI. VAG did actually do some commonrail TDI engines as well, but they were just used in the V6 TDI engines. But they still called them TDIs, as people know they're bloody good already. Maybe they thought that the PD system was more appropriate for the smaller 4-pot engines, and the common-rail system better for the larger engines, who knows!

But in some respects, the VAG 1.9 TDI could be compared to the PSA 1.9TD in terms of it being around at the same time (first car using it, I think, was the Audi 80 in 1991), and certainly now, available at very similar prices. In that respect - VAG had a massive edge over PSA in terms of the capabilities and economy of the engines that were basically head to head at the time.