Privately owned, no new car makes "Financial sense" so if you prefer a diesel, get one.

I agree with your comments, however in this case neither diesel engine on offer makes sense for me (to put it bluntly not powerful enough). I've also got one eye on what this and successive governments are likely to do vis a vis diesel engined cars in cities (Euro 6 probably safe for now but anything older who knows?). Where I live in Bristol the independant major (who is an anti-car extremist) has already floated the idea of road charging to drive in the centre (happy to avoid wherever possible thanks as it's largely a disgusting place to visit). I can imagine he would be happy to ban anything with a diesel engine too.

If a truly accessible and usable electric option (or even hybrid) was available I'd snap their hands off. By usable I mean 250-300 mile range and overnight charging.

Getting back to your point - there is one thing that DOES make sense when considering a diesel. If you only do short trips and rarely get the engine truly warm the DPF will clog and you WILL face billes for many ££££. Fuel economy will be worse than a petrol too as a cold diesel engine eats fuel for a living. So, there is a sound connection between miles driven and choice of engine (driving style mainly).

I never understand comments like " you only do x thousand miles a year so you don't need a diesel".

If a driver prefers the characteristics of a diesel engine, in my opinion it matters not a jot how many miles a year that driver does.

I do understand the need for certain aspects of modern diesels to be observed and understood but to say it only makes financial sense if you do over 10000 miles a year is ridiculous.

Privately owned, no new car makes "Financial sense" so if you prefer a diesel, get one.

I love the way diesels drive, we have had one, sometimes two turbo diesels on the drive since 1996. Not always done the 12, 15 thousand a year recomended but I can say without any doubt all the diesels we have owned have saved us £££££'s over the average of 5 years we have owned them even when you take into account the extra purchase price (most of which we have recovered at sale time).

But things have changed in our house. DPF's are now standard (have been since 2010) and there is no way I want a bill for £1000 or more just because I don't do enough of the right type of driving. So when I swapped last time I bought a petrol. Its a turbo so its driving charisteristics are actually better than a turbo diesel and its mpg is not much short of what I was getting form the last car. When I did the calcs it looked like the break even point for my current car would be 65,000 miles, since I am only likely to do about 40,000 miles in it it made no sense.

Wife recently swapped from diesel to petrol, hers is supercharged. In the diesel she could average 60 mpg approx on a trip to her mothers. On her last trip in a still tight car she averaged about 62 mpg. She would never break even with the identical diesel doing her mileage over 5 years.

So after 20 happy years with diesels we are currently 2 very happy petrol owners again. Things have moved on and some petrols are way better. Choose carefully.