In our age, it is no longer possible to be surprised at a diesel engine in a passenger car. However, for a Soviet person at one time such a "luxury" was a novelty. And all because the USSR actually did not produce diesel cars for the consumer market. What was the reason for this peculiarity of the domestic auto industry? After all, diesel units were produced in the Union in huge quantities.
The first passenger cars appeared in Europe in 1936. All over the world, the demand for diesel fuel was growing, and therefore carmakers willingly switched to a new type of engine. However, in the Soviet Union, nothing like this happened at that time for a number of reasons, although diesel units were made in large quantities. And they all went mainly to either military or trucks, including military equipment. Why is it so?
If we talk specifically about the 1930-1940s, then here it should first of all be noted that with the motorization of the population at that time it was rather bad. A passenger car was a real luxury item in those years. Primarily due to the fact that the domestic industry had fundamentally different tasks, namely preparation for war. However, even without this preparation, the consumer segment of the industry had many more important priorities than making personal cars for everyone. The active motorization of the USSR will begin only after the end of the Second World War.
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The first real reason for the long ignorance of diesel engines on ordinary cars is that for quite a long time there was very cheap gasoline in the USSR. There was no competition between diesel and gasoline in the country at all, unlike in the Western countries, and therefore there was no need to make diesel units for the consumer segment of the market. The first diesel engine for a passenger car VAZ appeared only in 1986!
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The second reason was that diesel engines for a long time, on average, were more expensive than gasoline ones, and therefore the designers believed that there was no point in even trying to remake them for mass civil sector. Moreover, the main "peaceful" fuel - gasoline and so is quite cheap.
Continuing the topic, read about "Five" foreign cars that you can easily take in the secondary market for 350 thousand.
A source: https://novate.ru/blogs/130520/54508/