BMW M550d 3.0 Triturbo Diesel Could Jump to 420 hp With 5 Series Refresh

With its 381 hp available since the summer of 2012 Triturbo engine in BMW M550d & Co. no less than the most powerful six-cylinder diesel, which was until now the high-volume automotive use - but some customers is not enough apparently. Especially those customers who have switched from the BMW 535d with twin turbo diesel and also more than 300 horsepower on the new Triturbo miss subjectively expected more performance..

Accordingly stubbornly hold rumors that Munich is already working feverishly on a first update for the young engine. Here, about 420 hp is the speech that will make the facelift for the 5-Series (F10 LCI) from the summer of 2013 for a greater distance to the models with twin-turbo diesel. In addition, the BMW M performance model would not this way in terms of performance to fall too far behind the future 450-hp BMW 550i F10 LCI..
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enthusiastx11 - 11/28/2012 3:29:48 PM

+2 Boost

well considering that every major global luxury maker (mercedes, bmw, audi, bentley, porsche, etc, etc.) is now using turbos, you must be afraid to drive.

M5twinturbo - 11/28/2012 10:00:28 AM

+4 Boost

That would be damn impressive! 420hp from a 3.0 diesel would be 140hp per liter. For comparison Audi's S6 makes 420 from a 4.0 petrol engine. BMW is definitely at the forefront of high performance diesels.

chewy - 11/28/2012 1:09:46 PM

-2 Boost

They can add boost all they want but is that power even useful. From what I have seen the 550d is actually a decent bit slower than the pre power boost 550i. And the "420" horsepower Audi 4.0 still outperforms even the "updated" 450 horsepower/480 lb-ft of torque BMW 4.4 turbo which until recently made 400 yet still outperformed the triturbo. If anything that engine is pulling a Hyundai.

M5twinturbo - 11/28/2012 1:29:57 PM

+2 Boost

The 550d also comes in xdrive. The 550d has been clocked to 60 as fast as 4.5 seconds....faster than the 400hp 550. If the M550d had launch control it wouldn’t be hard to imagine what it would be capable of...look at the S6. The fact BMW can make a 3.0 diesel but up the same power, and a ton more torque than a TT 4.0 V8 is remarkable. I haven’t seen any tests of the updated N63 V8. By "outperform" you must mean the S6 is quick to 60mph, but there is obviously more to performance than 0-60. Take away the novelty launch control on the S6 and it does 5-60mph in 4.9 which is more indicative of its actual pulling power...which is almost the same time a M550d does 5-60..

chewy - 11/28/2012 2:35:57 PM

-1 Boost

All the 550d testing I saw places it at best as quick as the 550i to 60 (or slower) and slower at higher speeds. Road & Track just tested the updated 650 GS xdrive with 445 horsepower and supposedly a healthy 480 lb-ft of torque and it's slower than the S7. The S7 is .4 quicker to 60 but the gap grows to 1.7 seconds at 0-120. Here are the kindest numbers for the 550xidmdrive that I can find and some slow numbers for the S7 from the same German magazine. Things would be clearer if a US mag tested the 550ixd M sport but that may never come.

0-100 km/h: S7 4.7 seconds, 550ixdrivem 5.0 seconds
0-200 km/h: S7 16.8 seconds, 550ixdrivem 19.2 seconds

chewy - 11/28/2012 2:42:30 PM

-1 Boost

I am not saying the triple turbo isn't impressive, its hp/liter is extra impressive (even higher than BMW's own 4.4 liter V8 which you conviniently left out for whatever reason)

M5twinturbo - 11/28/2012 3:05:55 PM

+2 Boost

The fact a 6 cylinder diesel 5 series is even comparable to a twin turbo V8 S line Audi, says enough. "higher than BMW's own 4.4 liter V8 which you conveniently left out for whatever reason"..I mentioned the S6 b/c it has the same power number as the M550 lol. Regarding the 650 vs S7...those results are not surprising the 6 is a larger car. I’m not getting into a whole Audi vs BMW pissing match with you... My original and only point is that BMW's tri turbo 3.0d is damn impressive that it puts up numbers comparable to a petrol powered S6, and that BMW is currently making the highest performance diesels on the market.

chewy - 11/28/2012 4:25:04 PM

-1 Boost

Yeah the M550dxdrive is quite impressive, but based on your loose definition of competitive the Audi bi-turbo is competitive with the BMW tri-turbo.

M5twinturbo - 11/28/2012 5:36:06 PM

+2 Boost

Yes! The 1 liter smaller, 2 few cylinder tri turbo diesel is competitive with the equally powered bi turbo 4.0 V8 petrol engine.

chewy - 11/28/2012 5:49:33 PM

0 Boost

Your definition of competitive is loooose.

M5twinturbo - 11/28/2012 6:47:28 PM

+1 Boost

Not really, when you are talking just about engine specs...the 3.0 is very competitive with the 4.0...well not really the 3.o kills the 4.0 in torque and fuel economy. Put them in equally weighted cars with similar transmissions..I would imagine very similar performance numbers.

chewy - 11/28/2012 8:52:41 PM

+1 Boost

Well it all depends on your definiton of competitive. Like most diesels the 550xdrivempowerperformance runs out of juice at higher speeds. Most tests noted that for a diesel it's fuel economy is fairly high, of course it's a good bit better than a comparative gasser. The EPA test doesn't like diesels much either but that's a problem for all diesels in the US.

Here are some test averages from European magazines:

550d 0-100: 5.1, 0-160: 12.1, 0-200: 19.5. 1/4 mile: 13.3 @ 104 mph

S6: 0-100: 4.5, 0-160: 10, 0-200: 15.9. 1/4 mile: 12.7 @ 111 (Avant)

M5twinturbo - 11/28/2012 10:08:08 PM

+1 Boost

Lol, im talking purely about engine specification. Yes they have different acceleration times because the cars they are housed in have different weights and transmissions..like I stated above. But if you take the engine as a stand alone piece it more than competes with the 4.0 V8.

M5twinturbo - 11/28/2012 10:18:50 PM

+1 Boost

Side note.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFj4_ZsoWpU

Video review of the M550d ,and S6...550d did 100km in 4.9, S6 in 4.7...So an updated M550d with 420 hp would probably be a little quicker than 4.9.

chewy - 11/29/2012 4:20:28 PM

-1 Boost

In the test that you linked to it looks like the dudes just posted the acceleration from the press releases. As evidenced by the test averages that I posted (European data) the S6 slightly over performs Audi's claims while the M550d xdrive underperforms BMW's claims.

Since an S6 Avant and the sedan version of the 550d weight almost exactly the same weight it's easy to use a 1/4 mile to horsepower calculator (do a GOOGLE search) to see that the S6 is actually making almost 100 horsepower more than the M550d xdrive. Because the 550d falls of so quickly in the quarter mile I would reason that the difference is probably closer to 80 or so of an advantage to the S6.

M5twinturbo - 11/29/2012 8:08:31 PM

+1 Boost

Keep in mind the car in the test is the current M550 with "only" 373hp, so with 50hp more at 420 the same as the S6's it will obviously be a bit quicker.

chewy - 11/29/2012 9:10:52 PM

-1 Boost

Well of course if they actually increase the horsepower by 50 and not put a new label it should be quicker, not S6 quick (as I calculated the horsepower delta between the two is certainly more than 40 you see on paper) but quicker unless they pull a Hyundai and gain practically nothing when going from a 4.6 to 5.0. Some German mag did a comparison between the single, double and triple BMW turbo diesels and with each iteration there was more and more boost with diminishing gains/returns in power and acceleration. I'll look it up again but for extra 40 the boost would get to some ridiculous levels.

I95SPEEDINGTICKETS - 11/29/2012 11:09:44 AM

0 Boost

All this stupid back and forth for some bullshit speculation on engine HP numbers that don't make sense.

M5twinturbo....... if you were older than 12 common sense would indicate that such a massive jump in performance terms would make no sense whatsoever for a Mid-Life facelift and BMW HAS NEVER done that before.

Chewy..... Why waste your time with these clowns ?

M5twinturbo - 11/29/2012 11:24:58 AM

+2 Boost

All I have been trying to state is that it is impressive that BMW's 3.0 diesel rivals Audis 4.0 v8 in terms or output.

"Mid-Life facelift and BMW HAS NEVER done that before."

Really? Did BMW not just give the 5 series, and 7 series a 50hp increase? by introducing the N63Tu?.....So the current diesl makes 378hp so a 50hp increase to 420ish is not out of the question....

You just became the clown..