Big Mike OUR MAN ON THE INSIDE SHARES HIS THOUGHTS ON THE CAR BUSINESS
Who is Big Mike? Well, that would be telling. What we can say is he’s had more than 40 years in the car trade so has probably forgotten more about it than we’re likely to know. 12 | CarDealerMag.co.uk
COMMENT
I’m resisting the decline of the maligned diesel for all that it’s worth
T
here was a time where anything with a diesel engine would fly off your forecourt like there was no tomorrow, but I’ve a feeling the one-time fuel of the future is now in its death throes. If, like me, you’ve been peddling metal for several decades then you’ll know that diesel took a while to catch on in the first place. That’s because it was awful. In an HGV or tractor it had its place, but diesel engines were slow and noisy and they smelled vile. Even in vans and Land Rovers they were an unpleasant compromise, bought only out of a necessity to use less fuel (only marginally in the case of the Land Rover anyway). The diesel car was also a British invention. Yes, the fuel itself may have been named after a German but then so was Daimler, and the Queen drove one of those. It was a bloke called Charles Chapman who first came up with the idea of putting one of Rudolf Diesel’s oil-burning engines in a car rather than using it for industrial purposes. Originally from Lancaster, he co-founded Perkins Engines in Peterborough in 1932. With technology comes progress, and in 1975 – in the days when I was still using a hairdryer – Volkswagen came along and launched the first commercially acceptable diesel engine under the bonnet of the Mk1 Golf. In modern terms it was pretty rubbish – 50bhp and it sounded like a bottle bank in an earthquake when you first started it up. But it just about kept pace with modern traffic, it sipped fuel and it was impossible to break. Compression ignition, it seemed, was starting to make its breakthrough. Then along came a series of imitators, the big breakthrough being PSA Peugeot-Citroen and its venerable ‘XUD’ engine, which made its debut in 1982 in the humble Talbot Horizon – a car so devoid of redeeming features that using it as a guinea pig to test media reaction to the new engine couldn’t really do much harm. In the event, it raised a few eyebrows. As such, as the XUD evolved it found its way into other more palatable PSA cars and started a bit of a sales revolution. A Peugeot 205 or Citroen BX with the XUD under the bonnet was a versatile and likeable thing, with decent performance and acceptable refinement – back in the day where acceptable was acceptable and a diesel wasn’t expected to be as refined as a V6 petrol engine. At the time, I worked in a Citroen main dealer. The BX with the XUD was a desirable car and a very easy one to sell, especially in estate form. It was popular with families, fleets and people who liked to tow caravans around with them, which is a hobby I’ve never really got my head around when you can stay in a Travelodge for £35. But each to their own. Suddenly, every single car manufacturer on Earth was developing diesel engines – some with more success than others. The Europeans were first off the blocks, with VW turbocharging its engine before anyone else. The Italians joined in, as did Mercedes, which had actually been selling diesel cars for years but mostly to taxi drivers. Then the Japanese joined the party. Nissan produced a massive four-cylinder that had its origins at sea as a boat engine, which ran at such low compression it never got stressed. It had all the acceleration of a tectonic plate but was impossible to break. As a result, it was more commonly seen in the UK under the bonnet of a London taxi than it was in a Bluebird, although the latter did go on to be a fairly popular cab in its own right. There was also a tie-up between Isuzu and GM, which led to a compact 1.7-litre diesel that was still in production until the last-generation Corsa died off in 2020, such was its overall longevity and surprisingly good performance. While the Europeans were busy turbocharging diesels, the Japanese were trying other things. Over at Toyota, they were attempting to get a petrol to behave like a diesel with ‘lean burn’ technology and would probably have got there too were it not for catalytic converters being made mandatory on petrol engines, while Mazda – a brand that’s far more bonkers
Citroen BX diesel
Mazda 626 supercharged diesel
It had all the acceleration of a tectonic plate but was impossible to break.
