The main incentive towards buying a diesel-burning car is to reap the efficiency benefits it brings along (not this one, though). Moreover, there’s the advantage of excellent low- and mid-range pulling power, and the newfound silent running characteristics of the latest-generation units, two of which are found under the bonnets of the Chevy Cruze 2.0TD and Volkswagen Jetta TDI.

Whichever car U.S. buyers go for will also make for an excellent way to chew up motorways, promising good levels of comfort and longer fill-up intervals. Car&Driver set out to find out just how much you can travel on a single tank, and so they took one example of each model, brimmed their tanks and then set off into “interstate hell.”

From the onset, the Cruze was the favorite, promising 4 mpg more than the Jetta’s claimed 42 mpg official rating, and boasting a bigger 59-liter fuel tank – (also) 4 liters up on the VW’s, which has been known to leak sometimes. The two reviewers don’t pay too much attention to explaining this stuff, but it’s important, so we did it for them very simply here. Now what is said in the video below will be put into context, and clearer.

By Andrei Nedelea

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