BMW 2011 335d. If someone would have told me 20 years ago that my all time favorite performance car, after years of driving Vettes, Dodge Hemis, and even a Porsche 968, would be a freaking diesel, I'd tell they they were smoking too much ganza. But, damn, I really like this car.
Its power delivery is different of course. When you drive a car with 425 lbs ft of torque and 265 bhp, you expect it to talk to you. You expect the growl and scream as the revs build. With the diesel, you don't hear too much. It just builds speed at an amazing rate. You can feel the rear tyres breaking loose as the revs climb, but the engine makes hardly any noise.
Don't be fooled by the 0-60 times. The car is somewhat slow off the line, but once the turbos spool up this sucker is gone. The "bad" part is its so quiet, you are going 90 mph before you know it. The good part is that it cruises at 80 mph with the tach hovering around 2000 rpms and BMWs fuel use indicator pegged at the highest end of the scale. So far, I have 40 miles of combined city / highway driving and have used a little over a gallon of fuel. Awesome. The only thing I'm not looking forward to is replacing rear tyres.
