Just had the wife's diesel VW Golf MoT'd and I mentioned to the garage manager that as it was getting a bit long in the tooth, we were looking for a new car - ideally a diesel. He just shook his head and suggested that I reconsider.

So, I did some research and found that everyone recommends- Mainly Low mileage trips - choose Petrol.
Mainly High mileage trips - choose Diesel.

Reason seems mostly to do with the 'Particulate filter' getting clogged up and needing to 'regenerate'. This needs certain conditions to be met including a run of about 15 mins at fairly constant revs after the engine is hot. This also consumes extra diesel to burn off the particles in the filter. Our current car does not have a filter, but all newer diesels do.

On discussing this again at the garage (who are a top class bunch), it appears that they are doing 4 or 5 costly repairs to particulate filters every week!

So much as we love our trusty diesel, it looks like the next wagon will have to be a petrol one.

Anyone had any experience of this problem?

To get the filter trap hot enough to burn off the soot, the engine needs to have been running for at least 15-20 minutes and it then takes another 10-15 minutes to burn the soot and clean the filter. When DPFs were first launched into the car world, most people didn’t realise this – including the dealers who sold the cars – and so customers were unaware they even had such a device. If the driver does not regularly (ie – about once a week to once a fortnight) go for a drive of at least half an hour (40 mph or over), the filter trap clogs up. In addition to not filtering the diesel soot properly, continued or repeated clogging will eventually destroy the filter, requiring a very expensive replacement.