Small, Ultra-Efficient Diesels Coming to America?

Americans, for one reason or another, have never embraced small cars with diesel motors. This despite the fact that, overall, they're much more fuel-efficient and environmentally friendly than most of their gasoline counterparts.

In Europe, these cars are everywhere and quite popular. Both the Mini Cooper and various Audi models come in diesel formats. So why not in America?

Maybe I'm a little biased, having been a truck driver and all, but it seems to me that these should be common sights here. I think the reason they aren't is because most "greenies" in the U.S. see diesel as "that ugly black smoke from the stack." Even though modern reburning diesels don't do this.

The fact is, the latest round of emissions laws from Uncle Sam virtually knocked almost all small diesels off the market a couple of years ago. Despite this, Audi will be bringing their A3 hatchback to America again and BMW just got IRS tax credits approved for their X5 and 335d models. All of these, however, are high-dollar variants.

What about the rest of us? Well, don't expect to see any Mini-Ds or similar cars here, since the cost of meeting those emissions standards is too high to justify it (though BMW has said they're thinking about it). The Audi A3's gasoline counterpart sells for about $30,000 right now, so the diesel will likely be in that same range. That'll be as cheap as it gets.

On the other hand, with Honda's new Insight hybrid hitting the streets at $20,000 in a couple of months, maybe diesel doesn't matter anymore. Road tests are showing that is getting higher than 60mpg!