Originally Posted by
LeonOfTheDead
I find it's pointless to compare a 14 years old car to a modern one. I could say on original Fiat 500 consumes even less, but that's meaningless, even if compared to a modern 500. they are two completely different cars, and being on the market for the cheaper but still interesting car, perhaps for commuting, I would require generally some level of modern stuff and a decent reliability that usually a new car can better provide rather than an older one.
let's say I'm my father, looking for a new car.
He drives quite a lot every year, at least 30.000 km, and he uses the car for work. Now let's say he is also a car enthusiast as I am, so he wants to buy the more interesting thing on the market among the typical choices for a mid-aged man.
LPG is surely cheap to run, but requires you to trade some space on your boot, and that's something he needs when working. it could still be a possibility.
diesel costs about as a petrol car converted to LPG ot buy, and has a similar mileage.
petrol cars are cheaper to buy, period, but they usually costs more per mile (or km).
Also, with so much miles per year, he is likely going to change the car after about 2 or 3 years, in order to have a fully working car and some nice extras they usually give him when buying a new car, like 24h assistance, free courtesy car (among request) and so on.
LPG is basically excluded by the boot issue, or the same if you are going to dismiss the spare tire, because running even 500 kms a day, it could be quite annoying to have a puncture and not a spare tire. especially, he works in hospital, so being late to work doesn't mean he won't be payed for that time, but that a surgery operation won't be performed, which is quite annoying.
a petrol is too much expensive to run, he already tried that, and he also tried LPG, but finally found a diesel was the best solution, as cheap as an LPG, as practical as a petrol car.
considering performance, I can remember the different behavior of the car when running on LPG instead of petrol, it was like having two (fat) passengers in the car. I also drove a modern LPG factory car (Fiat Punto) for a long trip. it was surelly not a performance oriented car, but again the differences when running on petrol where enormous.
So finally diesel comes as the best solution, cheap, fast, practical.
no matter if it isn't the enthusiast first choice, we are talking about saving money after all.
when considering performance oriented cars, even an LPG as too many trade offs IMO.