Wow

Just seen a nice red 535d do very well against the 545i on the track.

Even Jeremy Clarkson liked it!!!

really good. I like the 535 to, raced with on the german autobahn yesterday and it really killed me :angry: :P

REALLY?!?!?! they chose the 535d vs the 545??? THATS AWESEOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I want wait to see it... 9 hours and counting...

Clarkson didnt say anything bad about it.

It did a fantastic lap. Same time as a BMW M3, Nissan 350Z and RX8. Absolutely awesome.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/topgear/powerlaps/page_2.shtml

They didn't choose it over the 545i. The 545i was more preferred, but they were very impressed with it's performance. Considering TG is normally opposed to diesels and they compared it to a V8 costing $10K more ... this was an astonishing feat for the 535d.

They put it on the track and it was as fast as an M3, 350z, RX8 and faster than Ford Focus RS, Lotus Esprit V8, Audi TT V6, Noble, Mercedes SL 55 AMG, Volkswagen Golf R32, Cadillac CTS-V, Holden Monaro, Volvo S60R, Ferrari 575 and Lotus Elise.

JBOO, quite a few cars you mentioned did do the lap in the wet ic the Noble, SL55 and 575.

here's a quote from the Top Gear website. They definitely like the 535, but say the 545 is faster. Some here with remaps might dispute that, we still need to arrange "the test".......

BMW 535d

Is the BMW 535 diesel as good as their petrol engine 5 series? Well, we wouldn't have thought so, after all, diesel engines are loud, cover the ones you love with a thick layer of soot and produce one huge lump of torque at about 3000rpm.

That said though, the 535d is really very good indeed. The secret to its success is the use of twin turbochargers. The concept isn't a wholly new one, and it's also not especially complicated either. Most people who have driven a car with a turbo, especially a diesel, will be able to tell you it's great when it kicks in. But therein lies the problem, a big turbo needs quite a lot of petrol and air going through it to make it work. So what BMW have done is stick a smaller turbo on as well. This means that you get more power throughout the whole rev range.

So, is the diesel better? Well, it's cheaper, does more miles per gallon, and at 70mph it's even quieter than the petrol version. So, in some ways yes. But let's face it, the diesel can't be better than the petrol unless it's faster. And it isn't. So it's not.

Quite so - and it would have been embarrasing for BMW if the 3 litre diesel V6 beet the 4.6 litre V8 petrol!

Their main point was htat it was cheaper, when almost as fast, was cheaper to run and was quieter.

Both great cars

absolutely, when they finally get the diesels over to the US I will definitely be looking at an immediate test drive. The cheaper to run thing is less of an issue over here at the minute, certainly compared to UK prices so it's driveability that most interests me. If I had a $100 fill up I would have to think twice about my V8. The 535 makes a whole lot more sense at six dollars or more a gallon :wow: .

They also seem to charge more of a premium for diesel engines in the US. Not quite the same here as they are slightly higher than the petrol equivalents.

E60525d, I took the numbers from the website and it didn't specify wet or dry, but that probably sounds about right for some of those cars. Still pretty amazing.