We all know what happened back in 2015 when VW was caught cheating with emissions and they had to stop selling new TDI Diesel cars in North America, well me living in a country that has less strict emissions and where the Dieselgate news didn’t really got big I thought it was just a matter of time until we got some of the freshly built but can’t be sold new VW TDI’s. And it actually happened!
Here in Chile VW did have to recall a bunch of 2.0 TDI’s that they were already selling like the Amarok and even stopped selling some Skoda’s and Audi’s with the TDI engines. That was for a brief period of time until everyone forgot about it and they just started selling them again.
Last year in 2017 there were new trim levels added for the Golf, Jetta (sold as Bora) and a brand new Golf Wagon TDI was added. These cars had things in common like heated seats, xenon lights and blind spot warning that the Golf never got before in Chile. They were also priced the same as the 1.4 TSI versions that we already had and most important of all they had the mandatory US-spec reflectors in the headlight that the Chilean-Spec Golf didn’t. It looks like what they did is just bring the Canadian units that they had laying around to Chile and sold them for cheap.
Then a few months later VW started selling a fully loaded Caddy for about US$15k we are talking about a diesel passenger van for economy car money. That was really tempting, of course they sold out in a couple of months, in fact every TDI that they have brought over has been a sales success because you get a “first world” spec’d car for the same money as the version that was already selling and as a bonus you get a fuel efficient, powerful, clean, modern diesel engine.
Audi also did the same with a few A3's TDI that were sold for about the same as the base 1.4 TSI but had stuff like the upgraded audio and a panoramic roof.
Even just a few weeks ago VW started selling a “special” pre-facelift Golf with the TDI, 17" alloys and xenon lights for US$20k, the facelifted 1.4 TSI is US$21k.
https://www.volkswagen.cl/golf-diesel
I just wanted to get your guys opinion because sure they are polluting but hey at least they didn’t get scrapped. These cars at least were never advertised as “clean diesel” and Chile is a market that also has stuff like Mahindra trucks that pour out black smoke they are floored and cars without anti lock brakes that were priced similarly to the VW TDI’s.