The 530d M Sport may make you expect brushed aluminium and carbon-fibre abound, but you’re treated to a cabin swathed in leather with wood accents adding yet another touch of class to the cabin. It’s airy and spacious. Set the seat up to be your comfort zone, and you can add ‘snug’ to that list of adjectives too. The beige leather and the black headliner go well with the wood inserts. The overall quality of material is top-notch, as you would expect in one of Munich’s finest. Space is also very good up front with generous doses for rear-seat occupants as well.
What BMW have had to do with the 530d – specifically, I might add, for India – is to balance luxury with sport credentials, and they’ve done that very well indeed, if I do say so myself. The digital information console looks futuristic, but isn’t something you would probably expect in a sporty Bimmer. I find myself surprised to say this, but I’d rather like those old-school red needles on black with white lettering. Watching the tips whizz north and past vertical, especially when accompanied by a soundtrack from a straight-six, is enough to send chills to enthusiast spines. However, this is a very different car, and there is a different sort of market that BMW have in their crosshairs with this car.
The sort of person who buys the 530d M Sport is someone who, quite simply, wanted a 530d M Sport; the essentials being BMW’s trademark straight-six engine, rear drive and sportiness lobbed in by the cartloads. Thus, the additions like the video game-style head-up display (HUD), the paddle shifters to manual-ise the eight-speed Sports Automatic transmission and the sharp handling with quick engine response at a mere flex of a toe will be appreciated. However, those looking for luxury would be better off going for the 525d Luxury Plus. The 530d M Sport was put together for a simple purpose. Even with diesel fuelling its veins, when it comes decked with the M badges, it means one thing: it is a driver’s car and it was made to be driven, hard!
The 530d M Sport as a package then aims at being one of the finest machines offering, and I quote, ‘sheer driving pleasure’. Thus, you have the essential blend of driveline and suspension tuned to deliver a feel-good factor: a six-cylinder inline motor, rear-wheel drive and taut suspension. What that means for the driver is a good 258 PS from the 3.0-litre TwinPower Turbo motor, which comes in at 4,000 revolutions per minute. A hefty 540 Nm of torque starts the party at 1,500 RPM and stays on till 3,000 revs. For a diesel, that’s a handy rev band and the fun doesn’t stop there; the engine spins up to a red-line of 5,400 RPM – that’s heady for a diesel, and is even in the region of some turbo-petrol engines of today. When it’s time to get to business, however, it isn’t just about numbers.
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