This is it. The leather seat grips your back as hard as your hands grip the wheel and the tires grip the road. The pavement is your playground and nothing can break the connection you have to its twists and turns. Your mind is calm, but calculating, guiding the wheels through every turn with finesse as the headlights cut through the darkness. Smooth is fast, and this car is certainly smooth. When you finally coax yourself to go home, stepping out into the cool night air, you think to yourself, "This is it."
The Dark Horse of Combustion: Blow-by
But what aren't you thinking about? Sure, BMW's N55 TwinPower Turbo inline-six engine is smooth and powerful, but what happens inside that engine is much more violent. Internal combustion engines are essentially controlled bombs; air and fuel combust to drive pistons and crankshafts. One byproduct of this violence is power, but there are darker horses
