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There is a standing joke in office. If it’s an edit meeting, Rohin’s best idea is a comparison story. And if it’s got a BMW in it, it has to win! Now, I’ve never subscribed to that thought, though I guess I was heckled into accepting it. You see, I can’t help it if I like BMWs, er... well, am ‘allegedly’ obsessed about them. But that doesn’t mean it needs to win a comparison test every time it’s in one. So, when I was asked to do the honours, I found myself in the deepest conundrum of my existence as BSM’s road-tester. In front of me was the Audi A6 3.0 TDI quattro, a car I so dearly love since I first drove it some nine months ago. And to top it all, the first 10 minutes in the new BMW 530d Highline had convinced me that the previous winner of our premium diesel saloon contest might just have to start wearing its rings and do the hula-loops.
It’s that difficult to choose a winner, because with the 530d, BMW has finally got a car to take on the A6 3.0 TDI on – fair and square. Until now, the 525d did sterling duty, but lost out to the A6 on just one count – power. It was an unfair comparison (so he says – Editor), and it became even more apparent because BMW had not one, but two more powerful diesels to possibly usurp the title. For now, it’s a battle of equals.
DESIGN
They say, when it rains, it pours. And when it pours, the water on the road picks up all its inhabitants. That means, pre-mixed dirt and other biological remnants. So if you cruise along the highway, with the wipers working hard, your car is bound to look war-torn on Indian roads. The test white BMW looked like it’d hit a landmine just a couple of kilometres after it was cleaned to its toes. Splat!, and it added more gunk to its wheel arches. But in all its ability to attract muck, it looked beautiful. Fine, it was designed using computational fluid dynamics or some such name created by scientists working on the CERN collider, but really, the water flowing over the lines made it look so fluid and the aerodynamics so unbelievable, that I still can’t understand the white patches on the front doors that were i-den-tical on either side. Six years into its existence and it appears like Scarlett Johansson standing next to Anne Hathaway – slender yet enigmatic.
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