Doesn't work like that in practice though does it. I've driven a bunch of diesels now, and without exception they are hopelessly gutless off boost (below 2000rpm) and are slow to pick up even when you are in a workable rev range.
Sometimes I drive my sisters 320d, it's a 3 series so I guess directly comparable to my 328i. It has more torque yet it's awful to drive in comparison. It's all about the delivery, diesels only deliver that headline torque figure at full throttle and full boost. Of course this is true of a petrol too, difference is with a petrol the torque output scales with throttle nicely and in a linear fashion. Diesel is much more of an all or nothing affair, fine on the motorway but really frustrating to drive around town.
+1
The off boost performance, turbo lag and then the peaky delivery of high performance diesels makes them anything but effortless in general day to day driving for a keen driver. When pressing on, the poor off boost performance, the narrow rev range in which the engine works, makes it feel like you are forever having to change gear.
The twin and triple variable sized turbos fitted to some of the premium diesels aim to counter exactly these problem, but the smaller 4 pot diesels don't have this luxury.
What hasn't been mentioned is that the diesel lumps are often heavier than their petrol counterparts which is often to the detriment of the handling of the car which again isn't ideal in an enthusiasts car.
The diesel engines do of course make perfect sense in many scenarios, but like the others above, it doesn't seem to make sense to spend thousands modifying a diesel hatch, when a better result can be achieved by starting with the petrol version of the car.
If you get to the point that you are spending that much to gain performance from a car, then fuel costs and mpg soon become relatively insignificant to the total cost of ownership - or if they were significant - then surely you'd end up driving frugaly for so much of the time to keep mpgz high that the performance of the car becomes wasted?
(Just to clarify, I'm not talking about someone mapping their diesel to give it a bit more performance for the weekends, while it chugs away giving 55mpg on their 20k yearly commute, but the more extreme and expensive mods required to take the cars to some of the performance levels mentioned above.)
Each to their own, but I'll happily take a quiet, flexible and willing petrol engined car over a diesel alternative until such a day that I'm wafting up and down motorways for 10s of thousands of miles a year or towing on a weekly basis, especially if I'm in the market for something fun to drive.
My car pulls hard from as low as the gearbox allows it to all the way to 4.5k. Two turbos help that though 
infact, its fluidity and effortlessness around town is one of its best attributes.
) gets lost in the one upmanship manner in which he posts. Possibly 6 should know by now.
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