Recently BMW's M division announced that they were going to produce high performance diesel vehicles. This is indeed an eyebrow raising comment but not unexpected as diesels have indeed progressed a fair bit these days. However, over at Mercedes-AMG no such nonsense will happen in the near future as AMG has stated that they have no plans to follow BMW in doing so. And this little bit of news makes me feel a million times happier than receiving news about a diesel powered BMW M vehicle.


The main reason for this is that AMG says that diesel engines, this includes the current modern-day mega torque turbo-diesel engines, have too many compromises. AMG looked at forced inducted diesels a few years ago and found out that diesel engines still fall short of the petrol powered engines in terms of sound, weight, agility and (throttle) response.

AMG goes on to add the fact that technology of performance petrol powered engines are 'converging with diesel tech' and cites the example of their current twin turbocharged 5.5-litre V8 engine. With direct injection enabling very high compression ratios (of around 12.0:1 for a turbocharged car), turbocharging and all the usual high efficiency systems a petrol powered V8 can achieve pretty good fuel consumption and C02 figures. Actually, it isn't that close, diesels are still more efficient per drop of fuel used but you can't beat a petrol powered V8 in terms of sound. Imagine a clattering, noisy AMG V8 instead of something that sounds like a Messerschmidt World War II fighter plane. It wouldn't be right.

Do also imagine a Mercedes-AMG without its fantastic throttle response and a rev-limit of about 4,500rpm. That'll be pathetic!

It goes to show again that Mercedes Benz are indeed a company that can ignore trying to be politically correct and give us what's truly important - glorious petrol powered thrust, revs, sound and fun.