19 Jan 07
It is said that time flies while you're having fun. Well, so do miles. Over 4,000 of the little darlings have flown under the 335d's wheels in the six weeks since I last wrote about the car, meaning it is now nicely run-in and I can make full use of its extraordinary reserves of power and torque. In theory.
In practice, things are rather different. Its simply absurd punch is just too much for the roads where I live in south-east Wales, which have now been soaking for three months. I am now so familiar with the blinking traction control warning light I nearly invited it round for Christmas dinner. You can, of course, turn it off but that just means it spins an inside wheel as you exit junctions instead.
Occasionally, however, I've been able to use all the available performance and the effect is dramatic. Recently I demonstrated its straight line potential to a chum who drives an Audi RS4 every day: 'thunderstruck' describes the look on his face very well.
'I can't think how hard you'd have to drive my car to get away from this,' he said while going on to observe somewhat ruefully that his Audi uses fractionally more than twice as much fuel as my BMW.
Indeed, if you learn how to use the engine properly, keeping the revs in the mid-range, it feels supercar quick. I'd be very interested, for instance, to find out if a Porsche 911 could keep up with this over a real-world measure like accelerating from 50-70mph in fourth gear. I suspect very strongly it could not.
