Is this the fuel economy rating for the new diesel Chevy Cruze?

The European market has for decades been home to a host of diesel-powered vehicles that never make it to this side of the Atlantic.

The same situation continues to play out today—with a twist.

With Vauxhall announcing its flagship Insignia is now available in Europe with a 1.6-litre diesel powerplant under the hood, GM may have tipped its hand to the diesel engine that will soon be available in the redesigned Chevrolet Cruze unveiled last month in Detroit.

Known as the "flüsterdiesel," which translates from German as "whisper diesel," GM powertrain execs on hand for the Cruze unveil said the engine is quiet enough to be mistaken as gas-powered.

Those same executives were tight-lipped at the launch about the new turbodiesel's specs.

With the announcement of the Insignia's new engine, however, we can draw a few conclusions about what the "whisper diesel" will offer when it hits North American shores some time next year.

For starters, the 1.6-litre makes 134 horsepower and 236 lb.-ft. of torque under the hood of the Insignia, which is down slightly from the numbers made by the 2.0-litre diesel on offer in the current generation Cruze, though pretty impressive when you consider the nearly half-litre of displacement it gives up.

We also know that the 1.6-litre-powered Insignia gets a fuel consumption rating of a combined 74.3 miles per gallon (mpg) using the New European Driving Cycle.

That, by comparison, is better than the combined rating of 67.3 mpg given to the diesel-powered Volkswagen Jetta.

While there's no way to know how the engine will rate on North American soil, this provides at least a glimpse at what's expected of the Jetta-hunting Cruze.