Diesel daze?

My mate Billy reckons Australian car buyers don't know how lucky they are. But being a bit of a part-time thinker, he can't help wondering if we're not going to find ourselves up an automotive gum tree.

We're still buying big sixes in huge numbers as a percentage of the market, especially compared with folks in other so-called Westernised (modern?) economies. They've all fled to eco-friendly four-cylinder buzz-boxes with thimble-sized engine capacities, geared to squeeze as much mileage out of each litre of fuel as they can. Meanwhile, we're running around this increasingly parched bit of Godzone in huge capacity V6 and V8 large cars and utes, guzzling twice as much juice to shift the same number of people -- in most cases one adult and a couple of kids.

Billy, who has been known to lean on the gate, chew the stubble and spit tobacco at his dog, reckons we're not really a Westernised economy any way. So we shouldn't measure ourselves against the Europeans.

"We dig stuff out the ground, load it on a ship, and the oppressed masses in other countries turn it into useful things. Like cars. Maybe we're not the clever country after all."

Billy's keen on the new Commodore. His dad used to drive a Kingswood. His granddad had an FJ. Billy's smart enough to realise the VE Commodore is a chip off the old block.

"'Course it's Granddad's axe," he says. "It's same old recipe GM has fed us for decades."

Maybe he's got a point here too. VE is a five-seat sedan driving the rear wheels, sucking petrol (albeit three tablespoons less per 100km than the old jigger) through six cylinders.

Billy reckons that if the price of fuel doesn't stop going up, eventually we'll be forced to take a long hard look at ourselves. And that won't be in the pretty new vanity mirrors in the Statesman or Calais. He reckons we'll be admiring ourselves in a new breed of crossovers. Cars that are less all-wheel drive ‘cross Australia in a week' machines and more post-vasectomy peoplemovers.

Billy may have a point here too.

In Australia, traditional peoplemovers -- derived either from delivery vans with seats and windows, or small passenger cars with some middle-age spread -- have been made about as welcome as an OH&S inspector at a B&S knees-up.

There's no sex appeal in a bus-like truck, nor is the slab-sided stretch-marked sedan-based tall poppy particularly appealing to anyone other than the terminally tedious. Meantime, truck-like four-wheel drives with the handling finesse of a shipping container won over the dreamers with a big brood back in the mid-1990s, but oh how they're hurting in the age of the $1.40/litre.

So perhaps the answer is the new style of super hybrid for these mid-life crisis buyers?

Trouble is, most seem to be limited to five seats. So what's the point? If you can get brilliant mileage out of a Honda Civic, itself a victim of middle-age spread (just measure it against the pricier Accord Euro!), Billy would be on the blower blasting you if you as much as suggested a five-seat crossover.

If you must go for a multi-purpose mover you'll want a seven-seater that looks sexy, drives nicely and runs on the mere expectation of a refuel every fortnight. If it has all-wheel drive, well and good, but maybe it only needs to look like it has all-wheel drive? Ford Territory sales are getting along nicely on a split of two and four-wheel drive. One for the bush, and one for the ‘burbs. And who can tell the difference at 40-paces? (Billy can't, I asked.)

So, to the new-boy of the week… Has Holden's saviour arrived at just the right time in the form of the all-new soft-cross-roader, Captiva, complete with optional seven seats?

Medium market all-wheel drive sales are in free-fall as Middle Australia wrestles with what to buy next: To continue living the dream about the endless Aussie Outback adventure they never really got around to in the LandCruiser; or chuck in the towel and head back to Honda and save a few bucks a week on the petrol bill.

Of course, the answer could be to go twice as far on a tank in a diesel-powered vehicle. But despite an eruption of new diesel-powered models hitting the showrooms so far this year, sales remain small.

There's a reason half of Europe drives diesel, and that's an excise driven reality that makes a litre of diesel substantially cheaper than petrol. In Australia, mysteriously, it isn't. In most cases it is a little more expensive.

Billy, ever the pragmatist, reckons it isn't cloudy fuel that's foxing folks, but cloudy thinking.

"You don't need to have grown up on a farm and driven a tractor all your life to realise that diesel is the smart choice," he says.

What he means is that you can go a lot further on a $60 fill of diesel than petrol. While diesel engines are more expensive than petrol, and you need to drive further to make the whole equation add up, greater longevity of diesel engines and a welcoming used-car market in rural Australia should bolster resale values.

Problem is, no one except Benz and Peugeot really has any reliable data on by how much.

Out of 81,661 vehicles sold in August 2006, 14,310 were powered by diesel. Take out the trucks, and non-private use all-wheel drive utes and co and this total falls to 3935. That's just 4.8 per cent of the total market. Last August, the figure was 2729 -- not a huge jump in real terms, but a statistically significant number.

Statistically, again, there has been huge growth in private diesel car sales, up from 406 in August last year to 1307 this August. Expressed year-to-date, the growth is from 3003 in 2005 to 6533 in 2006.

Diesel SUV sales have grown, marginally in 2006, while petrol powered SUV sales have sunk. What that market needs is a brave major player to pull a diesel rabbit out of the hat and ride the growing wave of diesel appeal.

Ford won't be that magician. True, Territory gained a turbo motor, but it slurps benzina not derv.

Thus for Holden to move the needle, break the mould, and shift the Australian car-buying paradigm, a seven-seat, diesel-powered, two-wheel drive Captiva would be the go. Or a V6 diesel Commodore.

Alas neither are close to on sale. As Billy would say: "Bugger."