YouTubers who drive cars at full tilt on the Autobahn tend to prefer the latest models since they’re more likely to click with the audience. However, this 3 Series Touring painted in Techno Violet and equipped with a five-speed manual transmission wasn’t exactly built yesterday. As a matter of fact, we’re looking at a 20-year-old car, a 320d from the E46 era still going strong despite its venerable age.
Being a post-2000 car, it has the more powerful configuration of the M47 engine. The turbodiesel 2.0-liter makes 148 horsepower and 330 Newton-meters (243 pound-feet) of torque. It’ll still do 200 km/h (124 mph), as evidenced in the top speed run on an unrestricted section of the German highway. With a 0 to 62 mph (100 km/h) in about 10 seconds, let’s just say it’s a bit slower than the M3 E46 Touring that never was.
While diesel engines are now generally frowned upon in Europe in the aftermath of the Volkswagen Group’s messy Dieselgate, they’ve been hugely popular in recent decades on the Old Continent. It’s especially true in the case of wagons such as this 320d Touring, capable of carrying loads of cargo while racking up the miles with impressively low fuel consumption.
Unlike most automakers, BMW believes it would be too premature to abandon combustion engines and rush to EVs. The company’s thinking is the charging infrastructure still won’t be ready all over the world in the next decade, hence why it’s reluctant to pull the plug on the good ol’ ICE. There’s also the issue with pricing as purely electric cars remain significantly more expensive than gasoline/diesel vehicles.
Stricter emissions regulations coming into effect later this decade in the EU are likely to kill the diesel engine before the gasoline. Meanwhile, the Munich-based brand has diesel-fueled models as small as the 116d and as large as the 840d.
Since the video is all about a 3 Series, it’s worth pointing out BMW still sells an M340d, a niche model taking the shape of a performance-oriented diesel sedan/wagon. This comes from the same company that put no fewer than four turbochargers in its M50d models…
Source: TopAutoPOV / YouTube
