BMW 3.0-Liter Twin-Turbo 6 Named Engine of the Year

Jonny Lieberman
by Jonny Lieberman

File this one under "News that will not shock Justin Berkowitz." For the fourth straight year in a row, the propeller people from Bavaria have taken home Engine of the Year honors as decided by… motoring journalists. Who decides on which motor journalists get to vote? Who knows? Anyhow, this is the second year in a row that the 335i's dark bread und white sausage has taken home the award. And why the hell not? BMW has simply eliminated turbo lag, a trick they couldn't even manage in their own twin-turbo V8. And the power is awesome. I once asked a BMW engineer about the possibility that they underrated 3.0-liter twin-turbo's power to save the face of the then out-going E46 M3. He was aghast. Nein! That would be unethical, immoral and many other non-nice things. Who would do such a thing? I explained the history of American muscle cars, the notorious underrating of horsepower and my German friend looked nauseous. Either he's a hell of an actor, or completely in the dark. I saw a 335i dyno 275 horsepower at the wheel. Figure a 15 – 20 percent driveline loss and you're talking at least 330 horses, maybe more. But hey, who's complaining?

Jonny Lieberman
Jonny Lieberman

Cleanup driver for Team Black Metal V8olvo.

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  • Kman Kman on May 08, 2008

    This is indeed a glorious engine. Absolutely astounding.

  • Johnny Canada Johnny Canada on May 08, 2008

    @ Phil: Is there any company that makes an automatic transmission that can make it past 70000 miles? The days of the TorqueFlite A727 are long gone. If you plan on keeping your car for the long term, get a manual transmission.

  • Ricky Spanish Ricky Spanish on May 08, 2008

    Unfortunately, Dinan's reflash costs $2000 - fortunately, most BMW drivers are stupid enough to pay that, despite the fact that there are other tuners out there willing to do it for half the price. And yes, I did mean to offend BMW drivers. And yes, I am a BMW driver (also a Porsche and Honda driver).

  • Kman Kman on May 08, 2008

    Vishnu has one of the best tunings out there for the 3.0L twin-turbo

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