By Nick Syn

VOLKSWAGEN, AUDI AND MERCEDES brought along diesel-powered examples from their respective line-ups for participants in the Bosch Diesel Day to try out. VW fielded three cars, a V10-powered Phaeton and Touareg, and the latest model 2.0-litre turbodiesel Passat. All the cars were topped up with Shell’s latest Ultra Low Sulphur Diesel or ULSD fuel.

Diesel engines and performance are still a bit hard for people to come to grips with but consider the turbocharged 5.0-litre V10 engine in the Phaeton and Touareg which have one of the world’s most powerful diesel powerplants, developing 313bhp and a monstrous 750Nm of torque. In the Touareg for example, the 0 to 100km/h sprint is dispatched in just 7.8 seconds.

If that isn’t convincing enough, Mercedes-Benz’s famous sporting arm, AMG, once built diesel-powered high-performance versions of the SL roadster, and CLK Coupe. These weren’t present at Diesel Day, but Mercedes did bring along an E 220 CDI. This is the version that serves as upper-class taxi transportation that most Singaporeans should be pretty familiar with.

Torque is essentially what a modern diesel engine is all about, and this typically means twisting ability that is 50 percent higher than equivalent petrol engines. All the examples on display at Diesel Day had it in abundance. Diesels do require a slight change in driving style in that you can afford to be far, far more relaxed with your right foot. Around 2,000 to 3,000rpm are all you need on the tachometer, and the vast swell of torque does the rest.

Predictably, the V10-powered VWs impressed the most. With so much power, acceleration off the line in either the Phaeton or the Touareg was vivid to say the least. In the lighter Phaeton, 100km/h comes up in just 6.9 seconds, which is quick even by sportscar standards.

However, the pick of the bunch had to be the 2.0-litre four-cylinder turbodiesel in the Passat. This engine churns out a hefty 320Nm of torque, more grunt than even BMW’s excellent new 3.0-litre straight six petrol engine can manage, and it came mated to VW’s eerily smooth Direct Shift Gearbox. Around the tight, twisty circuit that Bosch set up at Kallang, the Passat was easily the best handling car there.

As short as our stints in the cars were, the experience was enough for us to say that making the switch to oil burners should be a pretty painless one. And if the fuel savings and torque advantages weren’t enough, the technology that goes into diesel engines is deeply impressive, too. In VW’s turbocharged engines, a pinhead of diesel is injected into each cylinder at a pressure of 2,000bar (the equivalent of you bearing all the weight of a small sedan on one fingernail), and at a
frequency of 250 times a second.