I don't know about the US, but I think in the UK there has been a cross over between petrol and diesel. I think you now get better performance and economy with only slightly less refinement from diesels than you get from the equivalent petrol engines. My last 3 cars have been diesels and I don't think I'd switch back now.

 

No matter. What I mean is that BMW NA in all its vast wisdom will follow Audi/VW and put diesel to SUVs first. Then some bozo will decide that only environmentalists are going to buy diesels and no enthusiast will touch them and make E60 with weak diesel - something along the lines of MB 320 CDI. And justification will be "diesels are not popular in US" and "we don't want to cannibalize 535i sales".

 

Again as per Autocar test of standard car I think it was something like 6 secs to 60 and 16 to 100. BMW average per UK gallon 36, new LCI supposed to be more, maybe nearer 40.

 

I see no problems putting the diesel in the X5 first. VW's fault was putting in a V-10 diesel with the same mileage as most V8's of the class. Why would you pay more and get the same mileage? The X5 is a people mover so an efficient, but not anemic, diesel would be a perfect pairing.

 

Nothing wrong with diesel in X5, I am just trying to show their train of thought: "Americans love SUVs -> SUVs consume a lot of gas -> Americans will buy SUVs with diesel". I.e. idea of bringing diesels to US is based on making an SUV that consumes less fuel. Not on the fact that diesel is powerful, provides a lot of torque and generally useful in a sports sedan. Lower fuel consumption is a bonus.

 

umm, and when driving a SUV you might want to hook up something behind the car, with the gas engine you will double your fuel consumption and not have a great performance if its quite heavy.
If you are driving diesel you can almost forget that you have something behind your car and you will almost have the same performance .

 

Finally the US market is coming into the 21st century!
Europeans know that Diesel is the way to go no loss of 0-60 in most well engineered engines, better fuel consumption and better low down grunt in fact why would you want petrol until it catches up with diesel?