Americans in general have a very dim view of diesels as whole based mostly on sheer ignorance and ill-concieved bias. Your average citizen takes television as gospel, and last time I paused to consider the tube there wasn't anyone talking diesel. Many here are still smarting over GM's diesel-converted 305 that spontaneously self-destructed in many Oldsmobiles and the lackluster performance of miserly VW Rabbits sold en masse during the last fuel crunch.

Now, the Italian ride mentioned previously was almost certainly a normally aspirated economy car. So of course it left you feeling flat. I've got an '82 Mercedes 300D Turbo with a manual tranny and that thing scoots. And I haven't even turned up the injector pump yet, which would turn that 2-ton sled into an actual drag car. Diesels are amazing in that all you really need to do to get more performance out of them is get more fuel and air into the engine. That's it.

Diesel fuel also has benefits as there's more energy in a given volume of diesel than gasoline, one reason they typically get much better economy than gas vehicles. Throttle response has much to do with the configuration of the engine and vehicle as well. Turbo and supercharged engines drive much like a gas vehicle in responsiveness. My big International has a supercharged 2-cycle V8 and it responds VERY quickly! A friend has a new VW Golf TDI and the VX has a time keeping up with it, and it's not even tuned.

Now of course that kind of performance comes at the price of economy, much like any combustible-fueled vehicle. But the nice thing of a diesel is that if you don't drive it hard you keep almost all the original economy, which isn't typical of gasoline engines. And if you use B100 economy isn't as much an issue if you need the speed. You can then not only beat cars light-to-light, but also pump-to-pump.