DO THE FRENCH have what it takes to blow away the Germans when it comes to the diesel game? After all, Peugeot cleaned up at Le Mans last season after a long period dominated by Audi.
It’s a fact that marathons like Le Mans are won on total consistency, lap after lap, helped by long driving intervals and the shortest possible pit time for refuelling and repairs. Diesel wins over petrol here.
So how would this knowledge translate to the road cars? How, for example, would Citroën’s C5 in new 3.0-litre turbodiesel guise fare in a sustained track performance test against a seasoned campaigner like Audi’s A4 with 3.0 TDI power? How about a little 10-lap challenge at Killarney race circuit to see which car is more fuel efficient when driven with intent. The game plan: two sessions of five laps each, a cool down, driver swap and back on track for another five laps. Then the final cut: the fuel pump test.
THE CARS
On the face of it the A4 and C5 are very similar – mid-sized sedans with similar powerplants and outputs, both claiming comparable fuel consumption figures for the urban and combined measures. It is a little irony that the C5’s engine is the essentially very British sequentially turbocharged 3.0-litre developed by Ford when it owned Jaguar/Land Rover and now built at Ford’s Dagenham plant for use in the Jag XF, Discovery 4 and Range Rover Sport. Could there be a C5 ‘R’ on the way?
We know the Audi has been most usefully compared to the superbly refined and rapid BMW 330d – similar aims, similar outputs (180kW/520Nm, 6.1sec 0-100kph sprint and fuel combined figure of 6.3ℓ/100km). They’re closely matched from the beginning, including on the price which kicks off at R463 000 for the BMW before you get any tasty kit. Everyone’s weighed up the two big German diesels and the choice comes down to brand loyalty and nuances of grip and grin.