Diesel may cost more, but you get better mileage from it, and the engines have more torque.
Hmm, for sedans, not a lot of options in the US for old and reliable diesels. Mercedes 240 and 300ds are still out there and get great mileage. They were used for taxis all over the planet, you can quite literally get one million miles out of them with reasonable care and they get close to 40 MPG on the highway. They are the favorites for the guys who make biodiesel.
The old VW rabbit diesels got 60 MPG but were not reliable and parts to fix them were high. I worked at a VW lot one summer and they had stacks of them broken, not worth repairing because of the expensive bosch parts.
Nissan for a few years had the Maxima sedan and station wagon with the same little diesel engine I have.
Another option is isuzu, they had a little turbo diesel truck in the same era, mid 80s, including a 4wd one, those can still be found if you look around.
Any of the big detroit pickups with diesels get moderately better mileage than the gassers, but still not very great. They hold/carry and will tow quite a bit though. They are expensive and repairs are quite expensive when they do break.
Too bad we can't get some of the models they sell overseas, there's a ton of them out there that get 50-80 MPG.
Toyota makes the toughest lil truck of all time, still gets great mileage, the Hilux diesel, but they were never sold in the US..sold in EVERY other country though. That show "top gear" tried to kill one and they couldn't. Even had it on top of a building that was demolished, they dug it out of the rubble and it cranked and ran. That's the little truck you see in just about any documentary or news clip from some remote region of the planet, usually got 20 people and like chickens and goats riding on it across what passes for a "road". You'll see those, expensive land rovers, and the toyota land cruiser, and that's about it for the really remote regions where parts are scarce and fuel is dear.
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