but its higher MSRP means that, as with a hybrid, you’d have to wait at least a couple of years to make back in lower fuel costs the extra dough you spent to buy the car
Is anybody else sick of hearing this comment over and over and over?
When faced with, say, a Camry with a 4-cyl base engine and a 6-cyl option (or "premium") engine, no one would ever dream of saying "You'll never make your money back on the 6-cyl engine...".
So why, as soon as you choose the premium engine in a VW - which, granted, happens to be a more fuel-efficient diesel - is the knee-jerk reaction to always to comment on how long it will take to recoup the cost? What if I chose the TDI because it's better engine and fuel economy never really entered into it?
Because that's what I did when I bought my 2010 Golf. I had driven a Rabbit with the 5-cyl, and I found it very pedestrian and kind of moany. I had also driven a TDI Jetta and was startled by the smoothness (I honestly haven't driven a smoother engine) and the effortless power. That's what sold me. Not the prospect of getting ~6.5 L / 100 km. That's just a side bonus. To wit, when I bought my Golf, there was a 2009 Rabbit sitting on the showroom floor - deeply discounted, and since there was very little wiggle room on the new Golf (and I was buying a higher trim level), the Rabbit was almost $10K less than the Golf I was buying. It never crossed my mind for a second to buy the Rabbit, even though it would - in the flawed thinking - take me over 10 years to recoup the cost. Some people just don't care....