Are you sure you don't want a diesel?

On your behalf I have wasted many beautiful sunny days in Arizona, California, England, France, Germany, Florida, Italy, Michigan, New York, Quebec and Switzerland listening to various auto industry executives try not to get testy because North Americans aren't really interested in diesel-powered cars.

And I mean beautiful sunny days filled with promise and majesty, the kind you really want to wallow in, forsaken so I could act as your emissary in a dark, airless room listening to a German engineer speaking English explain the intricacies of diesel particulates, so stupefied with boredom that it took me 10 minutes to figure out what English word "Ka-teg-oh-rees" really was.

At some point in the all those proceedings, there would be an opportunity for the media to answer the questions from the car company executives (first genuinely curious and then increasingly grumpy) about North Americans' view of this wonderful fuel-saving technology that they were willing or even anxious to share with us.

Paying twice or even more for fuel than we pay often made the European executives extra cranky, as they assumed that we were simply wasteful gits who were paying much too little for gasoline and compounded the fault by not looking guilty or even remotely sorry when this was pointed out.

All of this and more I endured so that I could tell an audience back home that diesels were different now, that you didn't have to wait for them to warm up before you could turn the key, that they didn't smell as bad as they used to, that they weren't so noisy (from inside the car, at least), and that they could be really, really quick on the road.

All of these stories of mine about diesels seemed to fall on deaf ears, except when I questioned some part of the oil-burning canon when one of the faithful would write to correct me with ill-disguised annoyance.

Before we go on, then, let me make it clear that I am not in any way against people being given the chance to buy more diesel-powered vehicles, if that's what they really want to do.

Unfortunately for the auto industry, that's not what many of them want to do, since they still continue to treat diesels like the next episode of Arrested Development on the tube.

My theory is that there isn't a compelling financial case to be made for diesels, unless you do a great deal more driving every year than the average Canadian and can earn back the significant premiums car companies charge for a diesel through fuel economy gains.

But even then diesel engines can cost more to service (check various blogs to see what VW owners have to report on that front), and it's not easy to find diesel pumps and not always pleasant to use them when you do.

Despite all this, many people in the auto industry think the breakthrough for diesels is at hand. Dennis DesRosiers is one of those people.

He is Canada's highest-profile consultant to the auto industry and he follows a fairly rigorous right-wing, anti-government path in all things.

DesRosiers believes that "the diesel renaissance unfolding in Europe stands on the environmental front as having significant upside potential for Canada. Today's clean and quiet diesel engines are separated from the 'smokers' of the 1970s by roughly four generations of continuous overseas development, eliminating almost all of the poor performance variables from the diesel equation."

This has been so for a while, but the timing will improve this January when legislation forcing ultra-low-sulfur diesel fuel kicks in this January, "so any lingering fears of dirty fuel, diesel odors, or visible emissions should shortly be behind us as well."