It’s pretty obvious from the amount of articles I’ve been seeing coming out of California that they’re excited at all the diesel prospects that could soon be for sale in their state. The first releases should be Mercedes in 2008 with their Bluetec equipped vehicles, and then Honda will release their i-CTDi engine in 2009. VW won’t be left in the dust either, though nothing definite, I keep hearing they will have something for 2008.
Honda had the most interesting approach to diesel that worked well for an advertising campaign too. The premise was “What if a diesel engine was built by someone who hates them?” That person was Honda senior engineer, Kenichi Nagahiro who also had a hand in their Formula One racing engines and well-known VTEC technology. He tried to turn down the project but eventually acquiesced. The condition was that he had to have free reign on the project. He was not going to build another noisy, smelly diesel like those previously on the market.