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Several years ago I read somewhere that a company was doing an aviation conversion of the VW TDI engine. It was getting some attention in Europe, where avgas is very expensive. As I understand it soaring clubs were particularly interested in it as a potential towplane engine. Besides the economy benefits, being liquid-cooled it had the potential for fewer temperature cycling problems compared to air-cooled engines. (Towplane engines tend to crack cylinder castings easily due to shock cooling. They get hot during a long climb at full throttle; if the pilot closes the throttle and descends too rapidly the sudden rush of cool air causes uneven contraction. In a liquid-cooled engine the thermostat would just close.)
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