In a period of ever-increasing automotive complexity, many enthusiasts appreciated the simplicity of cars with Diesel engines, manual transmissions, and RWD. Rear-wheel drive and manual transmissions are also incredibly simple and well-understood systems. Combined with the lack of emission controls, Diesel engines eliminate the entire spark ignition systems (along with their increasingly complex emission-reducing devices) rendering the engine bay of a Diesel car much less complex. In the meantime, since the availability and use of Diesel engines in passenger cars was so minimal, they were essentially ignored by government regulators. The engine bays of new cars became filled with these crude emissions controls devices, their electronics, and yards of vacuum hoses. Buyers wanted cars that got better fuel economy, and the government was beginning to mandate cleaner, less polluting cars. This was the primary reason for the rise of the Diesel passenger car in the 1970s.ĭuring the same period, gasoline-powered cars were beginning to become more complex. During the Oil Embargo, Diesel fuel was often more readily available, largely owing to the fact that it was mostly used for commercial trucking, and almost always sold for a lower price per gallon than gasoline. Car buyers looked for alternative-fueled cars with better fuel economy. In retaliation for US aid to Israel, the OPEC nations banded together and raise the price of a barrel of crude oil by 70% overnight, and oil production was cut 5% per month. For all of the 1950s, 1960s, and into the early 1970s, Diesel-powered passenger cars were barely a blip on the radar of overall passenger-car sales.Īll this began to change in October 1973 with the OPEC Oil Embargo. Sales figures were most likely minuscule. Production and importation figures are unavailable, but it is difficult to imagine that too many Americans would be interested in purchasing a small, slow, and expensive car that required difficult to obtain fuel, in this era. In the post-WWII era, Americans were first introduced to the Diesel-engined passenger car, the Mercedes-Benz 180D, in the 1950s. With this article, I hope to provide a comprehensive study into why this particular car has become an object of desire, and the realities of actual availability and sales of the rare beast. In my “Cars of a Lifetime” article, The RWD Diesel Stick-Shift Brown Station Wagon Mythical Beast of the Internet, I touched briefly on the American car enthusiast’s fetishization of this unusual car.
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