What car should I buy diesel or petrol

This article was modified on 2012-03-09 15:36:34


I am going to buy a car pretty soon. I haven`t decided at what engine I am going to choose either diesel or petrol. My cousin is a driver and he told me that it`s better to buy a diesel car because it`s better than petrol. He said that it will provide more headaches due to a lot of problems with petrol engines. Please help me, thanks

First of all, your cousin is wrong. Claiming that a diesel engine is better than another one on petrol it`s like saying that an ice cream with chocolate it`s better than one with vanilla. Nonsense, it`s true that it`s also a matter of taste but mostly it depends on what you actually need such as the following:

New cars: As you may know, some engines are well built right from the start and over the years they are known as counting hundreds of thousands of miles/km. It`s true that most of them are powered by diesel engines. However, it`s also true that some petrol engines will last a lot and they will never have the same problems as diesel engines have such as changing the turbo. There is also a guarantee coming with the new cars so at least you won`t spend money on additional repairs for a couple of years...

Used cars: That`s another story, you don`t have a guarantee ( for most of them ) you don`t know how the previous owner took care of that car and so on. It`s quite a lottery regardless of your choice diesel or petrol engine. You are going to need a good mechanic to look at that car and he should be able to tell if a car is better than another.

Highway or city vs how many miles / km / year

Believe it or not this is another thing that you need to take in consideration when you choose an engine. If you`re going to make more than 20.000 km / year go with a diesel engine. Less than 20.000 km / year, probably a petrol engine is better. Are you going to use the car most of the time in a city ? Again, probably a petrol engine is more suitable especially when there is a low number of km.

Reliability

In most of the cases you are responsible for how long an engine will continue to serve you. Did you read the car manual ? How is the quality of the fuel ? Better means longer life for your engine. How about the oil and filters ? Providing the best oil and filters will definitely help your engine to live longer. Are you going to stress the car engine and when you`re getting back home you will immediately stop it ? That`s another mistake, you should allow your car`s engine a couple of minutes at least 2-3 minutes ( 5 would be great ) before shutting down your engine. It doesn`t matter if it`s a diesel or a petrol engine, both of them will live longer if you do that ( yes, I am reading this recommendation from my car manual ).

As you can see there are a lot of things that you need to think about before choosing a diesel or a petrol engine. Additionaly  you can perform a search on several websites that advertises used cars and sort the ads by km/miles...take a look at engines that has hundreds of thousands of miles and if you see a lot of them it`s usually a good sign and if you will buy a car with the same engine probably it will be a smart choice. Sure, this won`t help you much if you`re not interested in a car that will last that long or you`re planning to sell it soon but that`s again a different story. I hope this answer helps you when trying to choose between a diesel or a petrol engine but if you`re looking for more info and you`re interested in reading more about the difference between petrol and diesel you may also want to check this article.



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