This Zephyr, too, had a center-mounted instrument cluster amid the two glove compartments at either end—a real styling exercise. As I recall, those instruments appeared more legible than the Saturn’s seem to be. Anyway, I survived (I think). John Dohner, Columbia, Maryland Csaba Csere’s column “Will Dr. Diesel’s turn ever come?” (January 2003) was spot on! Despite the fact that diesels are selling well in the big-pickup market, they haven’t made their way down to the SUVs yet. I don’t get it. We hear so much yapping about the lousy mileage they get but no acceptance of the most simple and available solution.

My brother lives in England. He just bought a 2003 Jeep Grand Cherokee with a Mercedes turbo-diesel that kicks ass! He doesn’t know how to drive under 90 mph, yet he gets about 35 miles to the gallon. If some of these chuckle-heads did the math and talked to some of their friends abroad, maybe we’d cut our oil dependency and keep well-performing larger vehicles on the road. After all, America is all about having our cake and eating it, too! Frank Champagne, Birch Bay, Washington Csere’s thoughts are compelling except for one major omission: It requires five barrels of crude to produce four barrels of diesel, but only four barrels of crude to produce four barrels of gasoline.

This means that diesel fuel is 20 percent less efficient to manufacture, largely offsetting the better mileage it can offer, and what is more, diesel fuel, by not being as refined as gasoline, consumes elements taken from the distillation of gasoline that can be translated into other marketable products. Maurice Goodman JR, New York.