So when North America turns its nose up (quite literally) at all these great new diesel engines, it strikes the car companies and their suppliers where it hurts the most -- financially. They need Canadians and Americans to buy diesels to help them amortize their engine development costs.
Which is why the pleasure of the company of the folks in my line of work is regularly requested at diesel engine programs and test drives. We will drive the cars and report our genuine enthusiasm for the advances they've made, and it must be said here that diesels are nothing like you remember from the past.
You pretty much can't hear them from inside the vehicles, they go like gangbusters once you get them off the line, and they are reliable and sturdy and cheaper to maintain.
When you tell the engineers and executives this, one of them will invariably pop the key question of why, then, don't the consumers in North America want them?
Soon enough, this person takes on the tone your mother would use to try to convince you that that nice girl or boy she sees at church would make an excellent date for the prom, if only you had the sense God gave a rock.
I always sympathisize with their plight, but I am also invariably direct. With gasoline costing what it does in North America (particularly in the U.S.)., the diesel engine doesn't have a hope of catching on here.