Drawing together three diesel heroes for this test – cars with a sizeable engine intrinsic to their ultimate appeal – uncovered vanishingly few candidates, and nowt with more than six cylinders.
BMW appears to be phasing diesel out entirely, in fact, with only its SUVs possessing diesel power on UK price lists. Your best bet of buying a sexier, sportier Bavarian car is a Buchloe-built Alpina – but even then, you can only order until summer.
Alpina is soon to be swallowed up by the BMW mothership, and talk of Maybach rivalry suggests rep-friendly cars like the D4 S Gran Coupé we have here won’t live on. It kicks off this group in terms of both size and price, although each of our trio possesses a straight-six, twin-turbo engine with a minor degree of electrified assistance.
All send roughly 350bhp through an automatic ’box and all four wheels for a 0-62mph time in the region of five seconds. Only their inevitable span of weight – and the Alpina’s convention-busting 168mph top speed – truly separates them in an on-paper comparison.
It’s the Alpina I hop in first, its exterior exuding glamour, its interior rich in luxury and its rarity tangible beside the more familiar shapes in our rural Derbyshire lay-by. The delicious past form of its maker is a not inconsiderable aside.
With little surprise the D4 S is an immediately lovely device and a really simple thing to get in and drive quickly and with confidence. Like all the best magic tricks, an Alpina’s plush sleight of hand over torrid surfaces is a continual novelty.
It doesn’t lack the core handing appeal of its base BMW, but there’s a cushioned layer here that requires the sunroof lip open – and Peak District birdsong flowing in – for me to remember the outside world exists at all.
Most Alpina buyers make the price and power jump up to a petrol B3 or B4, but those who go diesel are unearthing a hidden gem. Its B57 six has been in service since 2015, having had its debut in a BMW 7 Series and since been produced in single-, twin- and almighty quad-turbo variants while also finding a home in the Ineos Grenadier.