The manual diesel is fun to drive - the fact that I have picked up 4 speeding tickets in the last 18 months, and am sitting on 11 points (12 points is mandatory suspension for 3 months, or pay $$$ and promise to break no more road laws for 12 months) indicates that.
And it's not as if I haven't driven fast and exciting cars before - I've driven Formula 5000 open-wheelers around tracks (yes, I'm old) - but what a modern European-designed diesel is capable of is quite surprising. Particularly to someone who thinks diesels are still back in the lug-lug-lug stage.
I hope no one mis-construes my earlier comment to mean you can't have fun driving a diesel Cruze...I'm sure that isn't true since I enjoy getting behind the wheel and driving mine. I'm focusing on the manual transmission issue and if you've driven both a manual Cruze and a gas Cruze, you have to have found that the diesel just doesn't present itself as a European style road racer rally car. Yes, it's got plenty of punch, but not because it has a manual transmission.
I have lived and worked in Europe for a total of 13 years, until my recent retirement and return to the states. One of my jobs as a US government employee required my office, under my direction to lease our every day office transportation for 52 employees and naturally all of them were European econo-cars. I drove every one of them, both diesel and gas, manual and automatic for many miles. By our contract with the car rental company, we changed them out every three months...trust me, we went through a lot of different cars in my last two years. Although the diesel had plenty of low end punch, when it hit the RPM limiter at around 4K, it was a huge disappointment compared to the gas car that could wind out to 6500 or even 7000 rpm. The enjoyment of driving these little cars, including Renault, Peugeot, Fiat, Ford, Mini, and Smart cars was pretending to be the rally car driver.
I'm not giving an opinion for everyone, I'm giving MY opinion...that's my story and I"m sticking to it...lol.
