BMW 520d: It's fast, it's fun and it's fantastic on fuel

Meet the new weapon in my anti-electric car arsenal.

It’s the BMW 520d Efficient Dynamics. We’ve just driven it and it is an amazing machine.

First, it has 182bhp under its bonnet, it does 144mph and will get to 62mph from parked in only 8.2sec.

It would, if you got a nun to drive it for you, probably manage to match its Government combined fuel consumption figure of 62.8mpg.

You’ll struggle to match this figure because the car is rather good fun to drive briskly.

In fact, it seems to be somewhat quicker than the numbers suggest because I found myself going naughtily fast without even realising it.

Unusually for a BMW, the engine size is exactly what it says it is on the badge. A 2.0-litre diesel.

It’s fitted with a device called a centrifugal pendulum vibration absorber. There’s probably one fitted to the Tardis.

In the BMW’s engine it’s responsible for killing vibration if you drive the car around in top gear with unfeasibly low rpm.

It works too: you really can drive the 520d in sixth gear at 1,500rpm without your eyes falling out.

While we’re on the subject of gears, the BMW is only available with a six-speed manual gearbox and also only as a saloon.

You can’t spec any M Sport goodies either because that would upset the greenness of the car.

There’s more cleverness under the skin, not just the pendulum thingy.

You can, using what BMW calls the Driving Experience Control switch, select several different driving modes including Eco-Pro which messes around with the air-conditioning and other electrical bits and pieces to reduce their energy demand. I think you can do something similar on my laptop to preserve its battery power.

At £30,435 the BMW 520d ED isn’t cheap but when you compare it to the Peugeot ION electric car at £33,155 it looks like an utter bargain.

But it’s not just that the BMW is cheaper than an electric car that interests me, it’s that developments in fuel economy – particularly with big cars – are moving so quickly. Without, as this car shows, losing any of the fun in the process.