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The German automobile club ADAC has a list of real world tests in their database Eco-Test, albeit all the descriptions are in German.

Mazda are lying through their teeth. Every single independent study shows that Mazda's diesels exceed Euro 6 NOx regulations by very wide margins. See this page from Emissions Analytics for an overview. They are getting away with it because the German authorities are essentially powerless against car makers that have obtained their type approval in a country that looks the other way. May I remind you that VW was the first company to offer any diesel cars that actually met Euro 6 in practice in 2015? Mazda could have chosen to buy technology from VW, or try to develop something by themselves, but instead they chose to cheat and to lie about it.

I am sorry that you paid your hard earned money to some foreign liars, but you are not making it any better by denying the facts. If it makes you sleep any better: only in Germany are the authorities still actively prosecuting car makers for emissions violations and as I said, they are powerless against foreign companies, so chances are Mazda will get away with it just as easily as Fiat, Renault, Ford, PSA and the others and you can probably keep on telling everyone how great and clean your Mazda is and how dirty the cars from competitors that actually invest in clean technology are. Meanwhile, if you actually want a diesel car that remains within measurement tolerances of the official norms, all your options are still German.

It's still true, though. The Japanese are not as good as they used to be, but still overall pretty good and the Germans are still on top. Some French and Korean cars are also very good, while others are just as bad as Italian and American cars.

I hate to burst your bubble, but German cars, BMW included, tend to score best in the reliability statistics.

Have you not read the news at all in the past two years? There have been extensive reviews by agencies in several countries and they all found that essentially every car manufacturer has been cheating in one way or another. See for example this review by the researcher who first published about the defeat device in the VW EA189.

See the ADAC EcoTest, or this report from T&E for a per-manufacturer comparison.

First off, the per capitia emissions does not matter.

Of course it does. It is the only metric that matters. The climate doesn't care about borders.

Finally, the best form of normalization on this would be emissions per $ GDP (real, not PPP).

GDP is irrelevant to the environment. The only reason you would want to measure by GDP is that the US has an inflated GDP, so it would make the CO2 emissions of the US seem more moderate.

It would be meaningful to correct for exports and imports, though, since a product made in China and sold to someone in Argentina should really be counted towards Argentina's per-capita CO2 emissions rather than China, but that doesn't help towards your goal of making the US seem to do better than it really does.

Likewise, did YOU choose to lie about diesel emissions from German-made cars?

German diesel cars have the lowest real-world emissions. All cars that actually meet Euro 6 in practice are German.

Wow - what a fanboy. Don't know where you live but in the USA nobody wants a BMW, Audi, or MB once their warranty ends.

Here in Europe German cars are extremely popular as second-hand cars because of their long average lifespans and high reliability. This is also why resale values are higher and why lease rates are lower for a VW than for a similarly priced car from e.g. Renault or Ford.

Just check the depreciation on a 10+ year old BMW; a 2004 335i that was $48k new is worth less than my 2004 Mach 1 which cost $29k.

I have no idea what a 2004 Mach 1 is, but only a very rare and expensive-when-new car will be worth more than a few thousand Euros after 13 years. Cars lose most of their value in the first few years and a large part of that when you drive the first kilometres. That's a fact of life, I'm afraid.

For "great German engineering" from BMW, how about plastic water pumps that frequently fail before 75,000 miles?

Most ars have plastic water pumps and they are normally replaced along with the timing belt as part of regular maintenance, usually every 100 000 or 120 000 km. I doubt metal would perform much better. You would probably get more contamination in the coolant.

High pressure fuel pumps that were so bad it took 3 or 4 redesigns to get right. Timing chains driven from the flywheel end of the crank, and therefore expensive to replace, that frequently fail despite being "good for the life of the engine". Main and rod bearings that wear out before 100,000 miles (last N/A M3 and M5). Batteries that must be replaced once a year due to the charging cycle (last gen 5 series). Intake port flaps that break off and damage the engine on diesel models. The list goes on and on...

Every car has weaknesses and high-strung performance models like BMW M3s and M5s are probably more likely to have engines failures at some point than a simple 316d. However, the fact remains that the most reliable vehicles are mostly German. Skoda and Toyota also do well.

That is not true. Diesel emissions are enforced in exactly the same way as petrol emissions: in a type approval test. The problem is that the approval test is not very representative of real-world use and it is easy to game the test by optimising or explicitly checking for conditions that are requirements for the test, and unfortunately the law has rather wide loopholes that essentially make most of those tricks legal according to most interpretations. That is no different for diesels than it is for petrols. The difference is that with diesel engines, it benefits manufacturers to game the test by emitting more of the comparatively harmless NOx in the real world (as that allows increasing efficiency), while for petrols, it usually concerns carcinogenic substances, such as particulates and volatile organic compounds, as wel as carbon monoxide, although a few petrol cars have also shown to emit more NOx than allowed in the real world.

I have yet to see any evidence for trickery involving soot in any diesel car. It would be illogical, since producing more soot means lower efficiency and more engine wear (i.e., higher CO2 tax and larger warranty costs). Not something that sounds very attractive from a car maker's point of view. Additionally, the official emissions test is more or less a worst-case setting for soot production, with a cold engine and low combustion temperatures.

Moreover, the supposed cartel your link refers to consists of the three companies whose diesel cars have the lowest real-world NOx emissions and are the only three car makes who have current diesel models that would pass the new RDE test.

There never was a cartel. VW and Daimler just wanted to make sure that if the current war against the car industry would intensify, the VDA meetings concerning emissions control technology would not become another weapon used against them, so they reported what they did in detail to the Federal and European cartel authorities. BMW seemed to be caught by surprise when this came public, as BMW hadn't discussed those meetings with authorities, but there is presently no indication that anything about the meetings were illegal. The investigation will probably go on for a while, even if it is just to satisfy political desires to be tough against the car industry, but I think it is highly unlikely anything illegal will be found.

I am more interested in the criminal investigations in France against various car manufacturers. France seems to be the only country that considers software defeat devices violations of the law and is actively preparing a criminal case against a number of car makers, despite the fact that two of the worst offenders are French. Germany, in an act of typical German self-flagellation, only went after VW and Daimler, Italian agencies helped Fiat bury the evidence and the rest of Europe more or less ignored the widespread abuse of loopholes, likely made possbile by their own lobbyists, after having a few verbal stabs against the one car maker that was stupid enough to confess and draw consequences. The French government also initially tried to bury reports of Renault's practices, but fortunately there were enough agencies separately investigating the same matter that one of them eventually started working on a criminal case.

Anyway, the original point stands: diesel cars currently emit less soot than petrol cars.

Not to rain on your parade, Mazda are running ads now around here, stating that their models have been fully Euro-6 emission compliant since 201x (forgot the exact year, sorry).

Renault-Nissan, Fiat Chrysler and Ford also claim that all of their engines are fully compiant. Yet they all make cars that produce a more than five times the Euro 6 for NOx limit in the real world and they are all subject to official investigations because of evidence of manipulation. Mazda may do a bit better than average, despite relying only on EGR and reduced compression as NOx reduction technologies, but Mazdas emit a lot more in the real world than the cleanest diesels on the market and also far more than they do in the emissions test.

Thus it's good that you qualify the claim of VW diesels being cleanest with "on average" and "some time".

To be fair, in a recent test, VW became second, just after BMW.

I do doubt that VW have done more than other manufacturers to reduce emissions

They have recalled millions of cars to reduce the emissions. No-one else has done that on that scale. In fact, only a few manufacturers have recalled any cars at all to reduce emissions.

even without adding Tesla to the mix.

What has Tesla done to reduce emissions of existing cars?

BMW owners used to say the same thing about their "ultimate" vehicle (right before it started a never-ending journey into repair shops)

BMWs have above average reliability.

BMW owners used to say the same thing about their "ultimate" vehicle (right before it started a never-ending journey into repair shops)

BMWs have above average reliability.

That's Jalopnik, a site that has decided that every single part of any German car will fail every five minutes and will cost $1 million to replace and they frame most of their articles to fit that narrative, despite the fact that their conclusions are mostly based on a small number of American-market models with a very shady service history and lots of aftermarket parts, bought by the umpteenth owner at a price that seems to good to be true and that, in the real world, German cars tend to be the most reliable (see e.g. ADAC's breakdown statistics).

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy reading Jalopnik, but you have to take some things with a lot of salt. It's directed at an American audience and they have a lot of strange prejudices and many in-crowd jokes.

Statistics disagree.

Few modern diesel cars meet NOx emission norms in real-world use. See The Guardian for an overview and ADAC's press release for a full graph. The Volkswagens equipped with a defeat device aren't even in the top 20.

VW's diesels (cheat device affected or otherwise) do not emit more NOx than diesels from most competitors. Hence they neither achieved something that seemed to good to be true, nor did they contribute to additional deaths.

NOx is indeed not without harm, but it is less harmful than other pollutants in automobile exhaust emissions, such as particulate matter, hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide. Moreover, there are nowadays very few places where NOx levels are consistently at levels that cause significant health damage, whereas particulate matter is still a problem almost everywhere in populated areas. Particulates are the leading cause of premature death due to air pollution. While I agree completely that lowering NOx emissions is a useful goal, lowering particulates is much more important. Unfortunately, meeting NOx standards often comes at the cost of increased production of particulates. We must not let the current collective obsession with NOx stand in the way of reducing pollution overall.

Volkswagen is by far the longest-lasting brand on average and VW models have very few breakdowns, while American brands score well below average.

ADAC looks just like VW - bunch of crooks. Why it doesn't surprise me?
http://www.thelocal.de/2014012...
http://totalcarmagazine.com/fe...
You can buy a lot of advertising in your own country and take market just on patriotism. It doesn't work in the rest of the world.

Volkswagen is by far the longest-lasting brand on average and VW models have very few breakdowns, while American brands score well below average.

The facts say otherwise. Volkswagens are the longest-lasting cars by a wide margin (source) and they have some of the the lowest levels of breakdowns, with other VW group models also performing very well (source).

Oops, forgot the link to the 'Pannenstatistik'.

I think of all the car companies Toyota is near the top in terms of reliability.

I think it is the top. I never had any problems with the Carina E i drive, until i tried to make it swin ;-) My dad drove Toyota's for years without any significant problems. It was a Toyota Starlet that showed up at David Letterman for driving one million miles, yes on the original engine.

The german ADAC, the organisation that help people when their cars beaks along the road, maintains statitics of wich cars they pick up. Toyota's always end up in top positions and are the absolute number one over a 25 year period! (German link, but take a look at the graph.) The only brand that comes close is Mercedes.

I think of all the car companies Toyota is near the top in terms of reliability.

I think it is the top. I never had any problems with the Carina E i drive, until i tried to make it swin ;-) My dad drove Toyota's for years without any significant problems. It was a Toyota Starlet that showed up at David Letterman for driving one million miles, yes on the original engine.

The german ADAC, the organisation that help people when their cars beaks along the road, maintains statitics of wich cars they pick up. Toyota's always end up in top positions and are the absolute number one over a 25 year period! (German link, but take a look at the graph.) The only brand that comes close is Mercedes.

Hmm... OK, let's get all this stuff straight, please.

Do you at least know what Diesel particulates are? Here it is: they are the result of ignition of a fuel/air mix that is too rich, and are increased with the sulfur ratio in Diesel fuel. OTOH NOx are emitted by a fuel/air mix that is too poor.

BUT - particles are not fucking up the planet at any rate. Only have they been proved to provoke cancer when reaching such a level as would be achieved only by 1000+ modern Diesel cars (and when I mean modern, I mean modern EU Diesel cars, not the Diesel engines you have in the US, and also please remember that the sulfur ratio in EU is 10+ times lower in Diesel fuel than what you get over the pond) in a closed space. NOx I don't really know the impact of, so I won't mention them.

The main gas pointed to by car opponents as a "planet fucker" is CO2. "Good" news, CO2 rejection for modern/EU Diesel engines are far lower than that of current gas engines. Reason: they consume far less for an equal amount of work.

And if you really care about these particulates, here are the good news: Peugeot has equipped its Diesel engines with particulate filters (which reduces particulate emissions by 90%, according to German ADAC and UBA) for two years now, and Fiat, in partnership with Opel (both owned partially/completely by... General Motors), have developped a Common Rail setup which achieve the same goal without the need for such a filter and also reduces NOx at the same time, so as to obey Euro 4 norms as is. Let me repeat this: WITHOUT A PARTICULATE (aka soot) FILTER. Also remember that NOx emissions are fairly reduced by the simple adoption of an EGR (Exhaust Gas Recirculation) setup, which is pretty much standard nowadays on modern/EU Diesel engines.

In short, soot emissions and NOx emissions, in a few years from now, will be a no-problem for Diesel engines. And all this with a much better power-to-weight ratio and autonomy than a comparable electric/fuel cell setup.

And I don't even speak about biodiesels.