The diesel car market is a curious thing. It’s been around for ages, was relentlessly mocked by Top Gear and their like until a decade ago, yet now in Europe over half of all cars sold are fuelled from the black pump (and almost every luxury car, SUV or rep-mobile saloon is diesel powered). Even Top Gear now approves.

Currently though, diesel is rapidly falling out of favour for being nowhere near as clean in the real world as the official EU tests suggest, and it’s petrol-hybrid that is seen as the immediate solution to our urban air quality problems. But as hybrid technology is relatively new it’s being relentlessly mocked by Top Gear and their like… Hmm, where have we seen this before?

Anyway, because America is automotively about a decade behind Europe car manufacturers are now shifting their diesel wares stateside – probably in anticipation of the bottom falling out of the EU market at anytime soon. This new wave of diesels is being largely marketed as ‘Clean Diesel’ (because that way no-one will ask any searching questions), and Lino Martins has put this magic new fuel to good use in his wonderful diesel-powered Volksrod rat rod. It looks clean to us!

You can see more of Lino’s diesel monster on Flickr – click the link above to make the trip.