Hello!
Last night, I was at a friend's house. I had my '85 300D, and we went driving around in my car and in his '84 Euro 300D 4 speed. Being guys
we decided to see which car would beat the other off the line up to 45mph (speed limit on that road). No other cars were around, and he was driving my car and I was driving his (which, given that I've got more experience with gearshifts and he doesn't know the best way to get the best acceleration out of an auto 617, actually gave his car the advantage).
We had talked about this before, but this was the first actual attempt. I had figured that, due to turbo lag, the numerically lower gear ratio, and torque converter slippage on my '85, the Euro would beat the turbo off the line, with the turbo catching up somewhere around 35 to 40mph and staying ahead for the remainder. Amazingly enough, even given the limitations, the turbo 300D was faster off the line, and stayed a good car length ahead until we got to the speed limit and stopped.
So, I'm guessing that either the turbo 617 really does have a significant amount of power beyond that of the n/a 617, or the auto tranny doesn't make as big of a difference as we had figured it would.
Well, I thought it was interesting
(and BTW, for the legal/safety types, again, we didn't actually break the speed limit, there were literally no other cars on the road, and we know the road well, so IMHO it was safe...otherwise we wouldn't have done it
)