2006 Euro Performance car of the year

摘要

Round Two of our new League of Nations Peformance Car of the Year format and we pack our passports and liederhosen, and head to Europe. Round One saw the boofy Aussie V8s bludgeoned by a trio of turbocharged Falcons, lead by FPVs F6 Typhoon, so we're keen to know if there'll be any surprises when the best of Europe come out to play. Looking at the field, it could almost be re-named German PCOTY - six of the seven contenders hail from the Fatherland. Kicking off Euro PCOTY is Bavaria's fiesty little BMW 130i. Packed with a 195kW, 315Nm 3.0-litre straight six our brand new long termer gets a baptism of fire and flies the blue and white propeller flag by itself. Why no M5 or M6? We would love to have had the 500hp V10 twins along for the ride, but our testing regimes fell across the week of the Melbourne Grand Prix and the press cars were busy shuffling Jacques Villenueve and Nick Heidfeld to and from the Albert Park circuit.