Sporty Diesel

[tjlees]

blank said:

Well for one subjective is, as the name suggests, subjective so it's down to the opinion of the driver(s).

And those ratings will consider the type of car they are testing. So a '5 star' SUV may handle brilliantly for an SUV but they're not saying it handles as well as a '5 star' roadster.

330D grips better than the boxster too - 0.99g v 0.93g even given 1735kg v 1420kg.

Not suggesting the 330D is the better car or indeed a sports car but it is sporty - possibly more definitively so when on the adaptive dampers, which seems to be for most tests I've read and when I tested it. I can understand others saying its wallows/understeers on standard springs - I can't say personally, but for whole bunch of professional testers, including monkey harris, its very good.

For some, and to keep the thread going, the Alpina D3 Diesel is better all round package than the M3 http://www.autocar.co.uk/car-video/video-petrol-bm...

I'm not saying for one moment the D3 is better than the M3, but its close and not a billion miles away as per diesels of old

[Devil2575]

I said Alpina D3 first

[tjlees]

2:30 on the video shows how the D3 and M3 handle - epic

http://www.autocar.co.uk/car-video/video-petrol-bm...

[nickfrog]

tjlees said:

330D grips better than the boxster too - 0.99g v 0.93g even given 1735kg v 1420kg.

Source ? Having driven / owned both I know exactly which one has higher lat acceleration, by far.

Lighters cars with lower COG tends to generate more lateral load, tyres being equal. Even BMW can't defy the basic laws of physics.

[Wills2]

Baryonyx said:

One of my colleagues has one of these. The first twin turbo diesel production car, was it? The willy waving ceases slightly when you notice that it only makes 201bhp, despite having two bloody turbos. Still, far better than the ubiquitous and st x20d.

200 brake from a 2.0 4 pot diesel is pretty good, the new one 218hp IIRC not bad a clankerty oil burner.

[Wills2]

Willy Nilly said:

My manager had an E46 318i new as a company car that was an utter pile of unreliable st, he swapped that for a new E90 320d that wasn't without issues either and the east European shovel engine bought himself an E60 525i that as of tonight hasn't moved for 2 weeks due to the regulation cooling issues which means the antifreeze that should be in the engine is currently on the floor underneath it.

My conclusions are the BMWs are expensive, unreliable, high maintenance, ste that I'd no sooner use for a long commute than I would a lame horse. They must have a gloved had come out the dash and stroke the drivers off like Ranger Rovers have.

Yep that's huge amount of user experience to back up your conclusions, well done.

On the other hand I've run 7 BMW's over 12 years and done 250,000 miles and nothing has ever gone wrong, but heh what do I know.

[Willy Nilly]

Wills2 said:

Willy Nilly said:

My manager had an E46 318i new as a company car that was an utter pile of unreliable st, he swapped that for a new E90 320d that wasn't without issues either and the east European shovel engine bought himself an E60 525i that as of tonight hasn't moved for 2 weeks due to the regulation cooling issues which means the antifreeze that should be in the engine is currently on the floor underneath it.

My conclusions are the BMWs are expensive, unreliable, high maintenance, ste that I'd no sooner use for a long commute than I would a lame horse. They must have a gloved had come out the dash and stroke the drivers off like Ranger Rovers have.

Yep that's huge amount of user experience to back up your conclusions, well done.

On the other hand I've run 7 BMW's over 12 years and done 250,000 miles and nothing has ever gone wrong, but heh what do I know.

35,000 miles per car. You must do some sort of endurance testing or something covering that sort of distance.

[cerb4.5lee]

SlowStig said:

daemon said:

Mr2Mike said:

hammerrr7 said:

Can't go wrong with the BMW 330D

Though the 330D itself can go quite wrong.

+1

and isnt "that" economical.

As a current(and thankfully soon not to be) owner of an e90 330d M-Sport, this is my experience:

40Mpg, doesn't really move much either way including long runs on the motorway

HORRENDOUSLY unreliable, in 6 months of ownership(a month I was away for) it had the following:
>ECU Work
>Swirl Flaps
>Inlet manifold
>New Clutch
>Window Motor failures
>Multitude of brake problems
>Replacement brakes all round inc handbrake shoes
>Gearbox problems
>Wheels buckled

It has been a nightmare if I am honest and I have lost money to get rid of it. The total so far on visits were 8 visits to the dealership, twice on the back of a lorry.


When it works, I was very impressed with the performance and general package of the car but if you are spending time on a motorway, the M-Sport suspension gets irritating but without it, the handling isn't as good.

I think you might have just been a little unlucky as we had the same car for six years and around 150k miles and it never put a foot wrong with anything in that time but I do agree they aren't as economical as you would expect though.

[to3m]

blank said:

Surely "handling" is 99.9% subjective? You could try and quantify it by measuring roll/pitch/yaw rates, steering response etc but ultimately it comes down to how a car feels.

Car A could be faster than Car B around a track. Or quicker through a tight slalom of cones. But that doesn't mean it handles better.

A 330D touring may well handle better than a Boxster in your opinion, but I think you'd be very much in a minority.

I've got a 330d sport saloon, and I've always been surprised how well it handles. If you told me it could outmanoeuvre a Boxster, I'd be unconvinced - but if it turned out it gets through a cone slalom with greater ease, or whatever, I'd be no more than a bit surprised. It grips the road well, and there's no real body roll. It's kind of amazing how much you can drive it like it's a much lighter car.

But the reason it's kind of amazing is that it never feels like a lighter car. I guess that is your point. Sometimes, you read in car reviews that the car is heavy, "but when you press on, it seems to shrink around you" - well, the 330d doesn't do that. When you accelerate, you can feel the engine working against the car's bulk. When you go round a corner, you can feel its weight pressing against the suspension. It always feels like a big, heavy, lumbering car, that just happens to be able to go round corners very quickly.

(I do find it very enjoyable to drive, and all of this is part of the fun of it. But "sporty"? Erm... I dunno.)

The funny thing is that it only weighs 1600kg. But it might as well be 16,000. When I rented a Transit van once, that actually felt lighter. I can't understand it.

[heebeegeetee]

Captainawesome said:

Pardon....a 'sporty diesel'????


Do these exist outside of BMW and VAG marketing meetings???

Well, apart from being very capably fast from point to point, you can go sprinting with them and do really quite well.

I know of some guys sprinting an MG 6 of all things, and they give established sports cars a run for their money.

Diesels can be quick and they can do alright at sport, so I'm not sure how else we'd quantify 'sporty'.

[Brett748]

I'm not of the opinion that a diesel can ever be sporty, fast definitely, but not sporty.

I run a humble Seat Ibiza FR TDI for my 56 mile a day round trip, it does a calculated 65 mpg, it's comfortable enough and has a decent spec. It actually has an ok chassis but it's killed by the diesel engine, yes it's only the 105 bhp model but I have not once thought I wish I'd got the 2.0 TDI. It would have been faster but ultimately no better.

What the diesel is though is cheap to run which means I also run a decent spec Renaultsport Clio for a weekend and track car.

[Devil2575]

heebeegeetee said:

Well, apart from being very capably fast from point to point, you can go sprinting with them and do really quite well.

I know of some guys sprinting an MG 6 of all things, and they give established sports cars a run for their money.

Diesels can be quick and they can do alright at sport, so I'm not sure how else we'd quantify 'sporty'.

The issue is that sporty isn't a quantifiable term and everyone probably has a different idea of what it means. I think some people's views are guided by an ideological dislike of diesel.

[Devil2575]

cerb4.5lee said:

I think you might have just been a little unlucky as we had the same car for six years and around 150k miles and it never put a foot wrong with anything in that time but I do agree they aren't as economical as you would expect though.

What would you expect though? I think if you compare it to a 3 litre petrol then it offers similar performance, albeit delivered in a different manner, for the economy of a 4 pot petrol.My mates old 330d gets 35 mpg all day long and on a run a shade over 40. Ok if you drive it hard you can get sub 30 mpg out of it, but then if I drove my old 330i hard it would do low 20s or even late teens.

[Welshbeef]

hammerrr7 said:

Can't go wrong with the BMW 330D

Its been voted best real world car for a long time it does big distance can hustle handles really well great engine - downside wearing blue glove to fill up and hthe petrol sounds much better.



The reliability of the 330d is also very good and they wear very well - my old one left me with 115k on the clock still in pretty much as new condition nothing went wrong with it and I'd say it could have easily done that distance again without any issues.

[Wills2]

Willy Nilly said:

They are successful because they are good at selling and marketing aspirational cars not because they build reliable ones.

Isn't it nice when things just work?

Only the issue with your posts on this thread is you haven't got a bloody clue what you're talking about...

But carry on it's amusing.

[cerb4.5lee]

Devil2575 said:

cerb4.5lee said:

I think you might have just been a little unlucky as we had the same car for six years and around 150k miles and it never put a foot wrong with anything in that time but I do agree they aren't as economical as you would expect though.

What would you expect though? I think if you compare it to a 3 litre petrol then it offers similar performance, albeit delivered in a different manner, for the economy of a 4 pot petrol.My mates old 330d gets 35 mpg all day long and on a run a shade over 40. Ok if you drive it hard you can get sub 30 mpg out of it, but then if I drove my old 330i hard it would do low 20s or even late teens.

I suppose you instantly think of diesels as being fuel efficient but as you say when you consider its capacity, weight of the car and overall performance 35 to 40 mpg isn't too bad because it is pretty much impossible to get anywhere near those figures from a 3 litre petrol unless you tickle it everywhere.

[Willy Nilly]

Wills2 said:

Willy Nilly said:

They are successful because they are good at selling and marketing aspirational cars not because they build reliable ones.

Isn't it nice when things just work?

Only the issue with your posts on this thread is you haven't got a bloody clue what you're talking about...

But carry on it's amusing.

Boss man knows his cars and has a garage full of expensive, German ones. He had seen that the 5 series hadn't been used for a while and said to the manager: "what's the matter with xxx's car, is it the water pump"?

Manager: "yes"

The POS ticks and clicks like an old Simca, but it has the right badge and when it works will impress people that see him in it, they probably think he has made it now.

Nobody ever bought a BMW for the reliability.

[Devil2575]

cerb4.5lee said:

I suppose you instantly think of diesels as being fuel efficient but as you say when you consider its capacity, weight of the car and overall performance 35 to 40 mpg isn't too bad because it is pretty much impossible to get anywhere near those figures from a 3 litre petrol unless you tickle it everywhere.

In my exuberant and reckless youth I had a race against a 330d Coupe. It was an E46 with 204bhp, assuming it was standard, and I was in an Accord Type-R. There was nothing in it and despite me ringing every last ounce of speed out of the Accord I couldn't shake the 330d.

While some may argue that they're not sporty, they certainly can move and while the Accord had the edge in the bends the BMW certainly wasn't completely outclassed.

[Diderot]

cerb4.5lee said:

Devil2575 said:

cerb4.5lee said:

I think you might have just been a little unlucky as we had the same car for six years and around 150k miles and it never put a foot wrong with anything in that time but I do agree they aren't as economical as you would expect though.

What would you expect though? I think if you compare it to a 3 litre petrol then it offers similar performance, albeit delivered in a different manner, for the economy of a 4 pot petrol.My mates old 330d gets 35 mpg all day long and on a run a shade over 40. Ok if you drive it hard you can get sub 30 mpg out of it, but then if I drove my old 330i hard it would do low 20s or even late teens.

I suppose you instantly think of diesels as being fuel efficient but as you say when you consider its capacity, weight of the car and overall performance 35 to 40 mpg isn't too bad because it is pretty much impossible to get anywhere near those figures from a 3 litre petrol unless you tickle it everywhere.

As a comparison here between our M135i and 635d - the most I've managed to squeeze out of the M135i was 40mpg on the motorway whilst running in at a steady 60mph - bloody good mind you. On a good run, I can get 33/34mpg. Average on mixed driving (around town short trips and then some 10-15 mile trips on dual carriageways) is currently 23.4 mpg on this tank (the Freelander 2 it replaced managed about 28.5 over this sort of mix of driving, and didn't exactly have the same performance ).

The 635d - I've only had it about a month - on a trip from Bristol to the South Coast the trip computer was showing 48.7 mpg - over about 60 miles and I was cruising along 80/85 ish most of way. This last tankful I been exploring its full performance potential shall we say Current average on this this tank across 448 hard miles (with a return trip across London too) is 33.4 mpg (38mpg was the previous average for a tankful of mixed driving)- which frankly for a car with such performance and the manner in which I have been ignoring any semblance of economical driving is mental. Both cars are excellent - don't get me wrong - but the engines are not *that* different in terms of power delivery. The M135i unit is brilliant especially mated to the 8 speed auto and it's extremely linear. The 635d is also extremely linear with no discernible peakiness in torque delivery at all up to the red line at 5k - in fact it doesn't feel or sound like a diesel to me (at 80 the car is virtually silent).

Which one is sportier? Difficult to say since they are so different of course. Is the x35d diesel engine sporty? Well, if the M135i's 3.0 lump is deemed to be sporty then the x35d is since they exhibit very similar characteristics.

Edited by Diderot on Saturday 20th September 16:13

[r-kid]

Renaultsport megane 175?

Same great handling as the petrol but with more mpg.

http://www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/advert/2014...