It seems like a hard ask at first glance. Can you put a small engine (i.e. under two litres) into a medium-sized body and still get enough performance to not only hold your own on the open road without being overtaken by bicycles but also carry what you need for a family holiday (i.e. all seats full, the boot fully laden and a trailer or even a caravan tagging along behind)? Well, the BMW 316d proves that you can do this, and do this with style.

However, even though the BMW 316d is technically a medium sized car, it looks bigger than it really is. All the sedans in the new BMW have been very cleverly designed so the tailored lines and sculpturing on the bonnet and along the sides work in with the headlight design to make the BMW 316d look longer than it really is.

The BMW 316d is designed with economy in mind, so technically, it should be called the BMW 316d ES, as it has the entry level trim and specifications, and it comes in the sedan body style, at least for the moment. For an entry-level vehicle, the BMW 316d has a decent list of standard features, including front and side airbags, start/stop engine, 16″ alloy wheels, Dynamic Stability Control (which includes ABS brakes, Automatic Stability Control, Cornering Brake Control, Dynamic Brake Control, EBD and engine drag torque control), front & side airbags for driver and front passenger plus ITS head airbags for front and rear, front pretensioned load-limited seatbelts, manually adjustable air-con, multifunction leather-trimmed steering wheel, cloth trimmed seats a six-speaker single-CD/radio audio system with an input jack, follow-me-home lighting and power steering.

The real drawcard of the BMW 316d is not the finish – though it must be said that even though it has the ES package, this does not make it a cheap or nasty car. The seats are comfortable and the cabin has plenty of room. The designers obviously know that this vehicle’s most likely owners are those for whom economy is everything and luxury is an optional extra. The drawcard in the BMW 316d is the engine. This common rail turbodiesel has been designed for supremely low fuel emissions and first-rate fuel economy, and thanks to the newly developed BMW Efficient Dynamics features such as the engine stop/start body, the brake energy regeneration function and the engine design, the BMW 316d achieves what it set out to do. This unit produces only 118g/100km of CO2, and it has a combined fuel economy figure of 4.5 l/100 km. If you take the BMW 316d out onto the open road, it does even better: 4.0 l/100 km. This super-frugal unit is hooked up to a six speed manual (and it comes with an optimum shift indicator to maximise efficiency). And it isn’t too bad on the power and torque stats, either, despite being super frugal: the power gets up to 85 kW at 4000 revs, and the engine has the typical lots-of-torque-at-low-revs that is a specialty of diesel engines: 260 Nm at 1750 rpm. So you can still stay ahead of those bicycles while fully loaded and towing a trailer.

The current model series includes the:

• BMW 316d ES

For any more information on the BMW 316d, or for that matter any other new car, contact one of our friendly consultants on 1300 303 181. If you’d like some fleet discount pricing (yes even for private buyers!), we can submit vehicle quote requests out to our national network of BMW dealers and come back with pricing within 24 hours. Private Fleet – car buying made easy!

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