Having the B47 under the hood means you get brilliant fuel economy and superb performance
The 3 Series has always been one of the most admired one from BMW but this time, it’s even better thanks to its refined diesel engine.
How is the new BMW 320d better than predecessors?
The biggest and most obvious improvement is under the hood. BMW has taken its time to refine the old N47 and for 2015 model year, it has introduced the new modular 2.0-litre four-cylinder turbodiesel engine which has the codename B47.
The old one was a bit gruffer but this new unit is absolutely smooth and exceptionally quiet that you would not know you are in a diesel powered BMW. Even it urges you to rev it up or hold a gear as long as you want using BMW’s eight-speed automatic gearbox. Before that people used to upshift to reduce the noise.
What are other improvements?
Old Xenon headlamps are now replaced with full LED HID lamps. This is something that cannot be explained in words here but it would be more adequately put as having your own daylight in front of you. Yes, they offer that supreme bright and crisp. Most of all, they are lower power, thus saving washer bottle level in winter.
Thanks to the tweaked settings and new hardware, the handling of BMW 320d ED Plus is, a bit crisper. Another brilliant feature is the iDrive’s RTTI traffic avoidance system which help you avoid reds on your way home or work and sends you some genius diversions to ensure your ETA.
What kind of fuel economy it returns?
It depends on how and where you drive it so the claimed economy is 70.6mpg but on real time it is around 60mpg.
There is a brake drying function that helps to clear off the water from the brake pads by touching them to discs every 15 seconds or so to make the brakes act faster in wet conditions. So that probably be one reason of many to drop the economy to what it is.