I had a BMW 118d on a recent business trip in Europe. It is a 5-door hatchback with a 2L diesel engine; mine had a 6-speed manual. Shifting was easy, except trying to find reverse, but maybe that's a good thing. It had 143 hp but 221 ft-lb torque, and moved pretty well up to highway speeds. Visibility was good in all directions but backwards, where you could see a lot of the interior through the rear view mirror. The outside left mirror was a wide angle thing, and I'm not used to that. I prefer seeing the real scene in a flat mirror. It made judging distance a little difficult. Handling was quite good. I was able to drive at 150 KPH on the Autobahn without any change in handling. Road holding was good, too. There was one bridge where the speed limit was just 100 KPH, and that seemed too high. It was banked the wrong way and I went into the curve at 120. I let off the throttle and it slowed down, but it was still unsettling at 100 KPH. Still, the tires held well and didn't even squeal. I swore that I'd do better on the way back to town, but I did the same thing again. I just didn't remember where the bridge was until I got onto it. The one thing that I found odd is the auto shutoff. When you stop and disengage the gearshift and clutch, the engine shuts off. As soon as you engage the clutch, the engine restarts. Shutting off the engine at stop lights is now institutionalized. Should we change our minds about the practice? There is a button to turn off the auto start feature, but I just let it go. It actually came in handy when I was out for that ride in the country. There was a big traffic jam several kilometers long where two lanes combined into one to go through a tunnel during construction. I stopped, the engine shut down, and I just coasted down hill with the engine off unless traffic picked up. Then I clutched and the engine started up again. One more weird thing: Austrian radio. About half the songs are in German, and the other half are in English. Some are American artists, but others are obviously not. I could tell by their accents. Not English, American, Canadian or Australian. I found that odd, but it works for them. When I got home I found it very difficult to slow down on the highway. After going 93 MPH (150 KPH), even 65 seemed like a snail's pace.

One more thing: the seats were cloth covered and comfortable.

Cloth? In a BMW?! Heresy! Witchcraft I say.

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Interesting. I thought diesels had to warm up for awhile when started so am surprised to read about the auto shut off / restart in a diesel. But then I'm also quite ignorant of engines in the first place, let alone diesel, so once again am learning something new!
>^..^<

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Marnet
...still reading, still learning!

Maybe a starter replacement is less expensive than the fuel used before it dies. I paid 1.15 Euros per liter or $5.31 per gallon. If shutting the engine down saves 5% of the fuel used, that's about $4 per tankful. I don't know what a new starter costs with installation, but it takes 25 tanks of fuel to equal $100. At 40 MPG and an 18 gallon tank, it takes 18,000 miles to save $100. If the starter were replaced at 75,000 miles, the driver would have saved over $400 in fuel. Is it worth it? My numbers are a big WAG, but you get the idea.