On vwvortex forums a guy posted a log of an 82 diesel jetta with 500k miles and only regular maintenance. Kinda makes me want to get the TDI golf and keep it for a long time.

intriguingly, the new 3-series diesel BMW makes clocks in at 69mpg and is being used for fleet duty at the london olympics

New contender I ran across, still small, but not a hatchback:

Chevy Cruze Eco (and Eco-D)

Current Eco is a 1.4T gas gets 28/42 in a manual. Chevy is building Eco-D diesel Cruzes that should sell for about $21k with a manual and they are targetting 50mpg. They have been in discussion for a while now (2 years or more), but a guy who works at a plant building Cruzes posted on cruzetalk forums that they are already beginning assembly for these, with extremely low availability until Q1/Q2 2013. The engine is probably a 1.7T or 2.0T, but they've been very tight lipped about the diesel engines so far. The interior looks to be similar to the Sonic I looked at which was ok, not great, but for about $6k less than the TDI Golf.. I could get behind it. The torque of diesel is very addictive zipping around town, and getting a good looking small car with high mpg high torque diesel for $21k sounds great to me.

Love how this car looks in silver. Would need to do a few tweaks to the exterior, like taming the side markers' orange by replacing with clear and changing the gold bowties to silver. The wheels look chrome, but are actually forged polished aluminum. They weigh about 6lbs less each than regular alloy wheels.



Clear side markers

The interior is not very inspiring, I'll grant that, but materials seem good, space is fine. I can sit behind my driver's positioned seat with comfort and I'm 6'1". I haven't tried a Focus, but they are just ugly, IMO. As I've searched around all this time I can't take a Mazda 3 or Focus seriously. Hyundai needs to learn how to make a proper car before I even consider looking at another one, the Genesis was so bad I didn't even need to drive it to know it wasn't good.

Focus:




Mazda 3:



In Cruze related news I've found where they are saying only 5000 might be made for 2013 as a test bed and all will be automatic (lower mpg) and will cost $23.5k which is a good bit more than expected, though with most auto tranny options being about $1000 it's not too far off.

After browsing vwvortex for over a month, I've come to the conclusion that buying an Audi out of warranty is not a good idea. Maybe they over-hype the issues people have there, but they seem to have problems all the time and are expensive to repair. This thread in particular scares me from a used Audi. http://forums.vwvortex.com/showthread.php?5752369-So-I-went-against-advise-of-the-financial-lounge-and-got-me-a-high-mileage-B6-S4-(no-warranty-for-the-kicker) Guy buys a 7 year old S4 for $12k and it needs more than the car is worth to repair after he starts having issues with it almost immediately.

Also, $24k is the lowest price to get into any diesel powered new car in the US right now with the Jetta TDI, which also starts out as a gas car selling in the 16k's just like the Cruze. Both cars in their base trim are awful so it's sort of wrong to compare 16k and 24k. The minimum package I'd get for a Cruze would be the Eco which is just under 20k. This is why I was thinking a Diesel option for $21-22k is reasonable. $24k just sounds like price gouging.