turbo diesel engines in Malaysia

Common rail diesel engines have been around for more than 10 years now but common rail diesel engine cars only started to become popular in Malaysia around 2005 where people started buying pick up trucks such Hilux, Ford Ranger, Mitsubishi Tritons and Isuzu D-max. These pick up trucks fall into a unique tax category which made them far cheaper than normal passenger cars which would normally be cheaper in other countries. The pick up trucks became popular for its high driving position and ground clearance. The strange thing is the most of the people who buy these pick up trucks do not go off road and drive it in urban areas 95% of the time. Having a pick up truck do have its advantages when it comes to flash floods (which happens very often in Kuala Lumpur) and hauling stuff. People in Malaysia think of trucks and lorries when you say you drive a diesel vehicle! Right now the number of turbo diesel engine cars on the road is still very small in Malaysia.
In Europe, turbo diesel engines are very popular because of its superior fuel economy compared to petrol engines (easily 30 % to 40% more mileage per litre) and also the hefty torque that the engine produces. More than 60% of new cars sold in Europe are turbo diesels. In Malaysia due to the inferior fuel quality (Euro 2M) and very high sulfur content, turbo diesel cars running on super clean diesels (Euro 4 and above) are not imported. The high sulfur content in the diesel caused a lot of sulfur corrosion on the injectors which led to expensive replacements. Mercedes Benz was one of the early proponents of turbo diesel engines back in 2004 with their CDI engines. However due to the poor fuel quality and the high number of warranty claims for damaged injectors Mercedes Benz has since pulled out their diesel models from the market.
This is very sad because firstly diesel engines are far more efficient than petrol engines and secondly the huge torque that the engine produces makes hauling additional weight very easy.
Having owned 2 turbo diesel engined cars in the past, I have had good ownership experience. I have tried driving from KL to Singapore and back clocking 1,000km on a single tank of diesel. I was not exactly driving slowly at 150km/h for 70% of the journey. I was fortunate enough not to encounter any problems with the injectors.
Right now, apart from the pick up trucks, the only company that is still consistently promoting diesel technology is BMW. BMW Malaysia sent local quality diesel to their factory in Germany for evaluation and then made modifications to the engine to run on the local quality diesel. With the cars modified to run on lower quality diesel, BMW did not encounter the sulfur corrosion problem like Mercedes Benz.
BMW Malaysia has done a good job to clean up the image of diesel engines. Currently diesel engine models account for 20% of their total sales which is very encouraging.
I am hoping that the Malaysian govt will introduce better quality diesel fuel soon so that we can have a wider range of turbo diesel engine cars to choose from.