Being a racer, I am well aware of what Audi and Peugot have been doing with turbo-diesels in Sports Car endurance racing - beating the competiton with both power (really torque) and fuel economy.
About 2 years too late to be referencing Peugeot…being a sportscar racing fanatic myself I can say that Audi has been running a different strategy lately with Toyota (and soon Porsche) running quite efficient petrol engines, they’ve given up fuel economy for the power AND torque afforded by a diesel running rich.
It sometimes boggles the mind how much power one can wring out of a diesel truck engine, and still make it live long enough to not rebuild it every year in competition. Was nosing around on the NTPA’s website a while back, was an article in there on J.R. Collins’ win in the Super Semi class. He runs a 1982 (I think) Mack Superliner with the 998 CID Mack V8. That year was the only year he had to rebuild his engine due to a mechanical problem, that Mack engine ran beautifully for nearly 30 years without issues. The thing to remember is, these engines only run at full load for about two minutes, tops, during a run…
Getting 3000 horsepower at 4000 RPM out of a truck engine is one thing, seeing how far one can go with a locomotive engine is another…