ORIGINAL: fiery
You should have seen the look on their faces when I took it out of the box ... most had never seen a diesel in the flesh before.
Tell me about it..I pulled out my Swallow in the store once, and the man at the counter asked what size glow plug was on it, and how I ever heated it up.
I tried to explain it, but he called a second man over who asked what was on the head. Finally, the elderly manager came out and identified it immediately.
There's a term that I learned; "Betamaxed."
Betamaxed describes a product of superior technology or something to that effect, that has been forced out of the market by a more widely produced and advertised item.
A good example of a Betamaxed product is the Mac computer. Vastly superior to Windows, yet not marketed as heavily (until just recently) or used as widely.
Diesels are clearly superior to Glow engines, but they have been betamaxed out of the market because they are "weird"