"Cadillac hopes to sell 20,000 vehicles a year in Europe by 2010. To achieve that goal, GM understands it will need a refined and powerful diesel engine for the foriegn market. Cadillac has approached BMW to discuss the possibility of purchasing diesel engines from the German company. Other diesel powerplants being considered aer the v-6 in the Opel Vectra and several from Fiat."

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I saw this in my C&D mag. I didn't see this coming . As good as the BMW turbo-diesel is, Cadillac should really look elsewhere within GM. How good is the Opel diesel mentioned?

 

Id have no problems with a BMW engine in a Cadillac for a few years, as long as GM had their engineers hard at work designing a better one in the meantime.

 

Don't ever bring a diesal Cadillac to the US, remeber how well the diesal Sedan Deville went over in the early 80's?

 

That Diesel should come over, but just not in a Caddy, doesn't fit the image. It should go into a Chevy or Saturn

 

Hopefully nothing from Fiat, though!

TS

 

Was doing a search and found out that Lincoln at one time used BMW diesels (2.4L 6cyl) in the continental back in the 80's.

Interesting thing is, diesels account for 68% of BMW's European sales. That is HUGE. Pretty popular option. I could see why Cadillac wants to break into the diesel market there. I just don't want BMW's indentity or powertrain's tied into Cadillac's. Hopefully, they'll develope their own diesel engine, but the low sales volume (they're hoping for 20k anual sales by 20120) probably makes an expensive investment.

Speaking of BMW's diesel engine...it's a twin-turbocharged inline-6 and it looks like a pretty nice engine. Output is 272hp@4,400rpms and 413lb-ft of tq @ 2,000rpms with a 5,000rpm redline.

 

No wonder when you compare prices at the pump.

Europeans have come up with some good stuff in the diesel arena in the last 10-15 years, that's for sure. You can forget those noisy, smoky and slow diesels of the 70's and 80's.

TS

 

You really cant compare diesels of the past to the present models found in VW's and pretty much every single European car.
I say since BMW used GM's 5spd autos, we can use a handful of there diesels.
I think that in America, diesels are trucks that haul massive tonnage.

 

Why are diesels so popular in Europe?

And Cadillac putting anything other than gm parts in their cars is just plain wrong. Cadillacs supposed to be the premier gm division. They shouldn't need to ask for help from competitors.

 

It is cheaper than gasoline (less tax) and diesel cars get the milage of hybrids.

 

Gas is over $5/gallon in Europe.....diesels are proabably the only way many can afford to drive a car at all.

 

Yup.

In some countries, however, the government is taxing the use of diesel vehicles. The tax is usually assessed based on the weight of the vehicle: X amount of Euros for each 100 kilos, for example.

 

and they typically last longer too. I see old volvo's and MB's diesels on the road today and of course light and heavy trucks....many with 300+k miles.

I'm glad GM is getting into Hybrid applications, but i wish they'd give us a diesel option in our cars, SUV's, and small-trucks. Some of us would like the fuel economy of a Hybrid, but don't want to have to worry about the added cost of such tech (you'd have to drive a long time to see any returns since many cost thousands more than conventional gas models) and any potential costly maintanance issues like replacing batteries, etc... down the line. And so a diesel engine would offer us that. Isuzu makes some pretty good diesels, and so it would be nice if GM put their engines and diesel tech to use here in N/A in more than just full-sized trucks.