Hi there, all,
A few months ago I received an email from the RAC. Basically their message was that they now have an on-line version of Glass's Guide and would I like to try it?
So I went to the web page and entered my registration number. It told me (correctly) that my (our) car is an X-reg (2000) Citroen Xantia turbo diesel estate.
The web-site then prompted me to enter my mileage, so I keyed in 216,500. (It's currently almost 218,000.)
The web-site thought for a moment and then asserted that, if it were in showroom condition, our car value/price would be £114.
If, on the other hand, it were in average condition, its value/price would be, wait for it, £1 !!!
It's also worth £1 if it's in 'poor' condition!
My first diesel car was a Citroen Bx diesel hatchback, bought in 1987, the only car I've ever owned from new. That had to go when I was made redundant. By 1997 my fortunes had recovered enough for me to buy a used Ford Escort diesel estate.
That was followed soon after 2000 by a used Peugeot 405 diesel estate. That soon got tired (sunshine roof problems among others) so we bought a low-ish mileage Citroen Bx diesel estate.
I got deceived by a bad water leak on that one and the engine blew up - I'm very embarrassed about that!
Then, in about 2005/6 we bought the Xantia, at that time it had about 160,000-ish miles on the clock.
My understanding has always been that in a petrol engine to get the ignition flame to fill the combustion chamber, the fuel/air mixture has to be inefficiently rich. Whereas, with a diesel, the spray of finely atomised fuel is injected into air that is ALL already hotter than the flash-point so the fuel has no choice but to burn! All of it!!
But in recent years, the private motorist has been pilloried on grounds of 'particulate emissions'. I've bicycled in heavy rush hour traffic and been stuck at traffic-lights behind a bus with a belching 4" exhaust! I've also heard tales of trucks being tweaked to get them through the MOT emissions test and then un-tweaked once the pass-certificate is in-hand! So I have my own suspicions as to whose particulate emissions predominate. When I was sent on a value engineering course many years ago, we were taught the slogan 'Hit the high cost areas first!'. But in politics, it's 'aim for the soft targets!'
(/rant)