Go for the ‘03 VW. Other than the auto trans, the Mark 4 Golf/Jetta (97-‘06) is arguably the best car ever made, and the TDIs are as efficient as a prius. A reliable, fun to drive car that only costs a few grand!
Not exactly. Real MPG figures put the best TDI at ~60MPG or 200g CO2/mile. Prius is 65MPG or ~165g CO2/mile, ignoring CO2 from extraction, refining etc. You can't directly compare diesel and petrol by mpg.
Renewable diesel is widely available in the USA, especially in California (where it's over half of diesel sold), which has about 1/3rd the CO2 footprint of petroleum diesel.
Yes, the newer Prius models are indeed slightly more fuel efficient than a 20 year old TDI, but the TDI has a much lower cost of ownership, lower carbon footprint, and most importantly- is much more fun to drive.
Both of those numbers are basically rural highway hypermiling numbers, not realistic long term averages. Actual TDI hypermilers can even get over 80mpg, of course driving really unusually (https://www.kbb.com/car-news/vw-golf-tdi-sets-fuel-economy-r...). I think Prius hypermilers do get even more than that. Realistically you're only going to get around 40-50mpg in either of them in regular use. One thing I really like about the TDI, is the economy doesn't drop as much if you drive aggressively, which I like to do.
To be honest though, an old TDI is a hobbyist car, to get it to be reliable you need to learn all about tuning and maintaining one.
