Quote:
Originally Posted by mad chemist
Nice comparison.
I guess MPG figures are becoming more and more important for a lot of people these days.
Question: what happens if you come up against a chipped 135i???????
Game over, I suspect.
But got to admit, I'll eventually turn to the dark side when the eco-mentalists take over - probably opting for a 335d with the DMS chip upgrade.
Mad.
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Chipped or not chipped, the 135i will always have the upper hand against even a chipped 123d. The point of getting a 123d and chipping it isn't to try to out-perform a 135i. The point of chipping the 123d is just to try and narrow the performance gap between the two. At the price point that I would expect the 123d to be sold at in the US, I think of it to compete more with the 128i than the 135i. The competition between a chipped 123d vs. a chipped/modded 128i would be a better comparison.
The appeal of the 123d is that it plays the balancing act between ultimate performance and rock solid fuel efficiency. Right now in the US, if you want 45+ mpg, you have to COMPLETELY give up on performance and buy a hybrid that takes around 10 seconds to reach 60 mph. Boring! On the other end of the scale, you can buy a handful of sub-6 second cars that get less than 30 mpg (many times MUCH less) for less than 35K.
The appeal of a chipped 123d for me would be the unique ability to get 45+ mpg in a 6-second car. Possibly for under 30k. There is no car for sale in the US market that offers anything near that kind of "best of both worlds" performance and fuel efficiency, especially for that price.
The 335d is nice, but it doesn't fall into those same sweet spot of 6-second performance/45+ fuel efficiency/30K price parameters. And it is not available with a manual...