>> It's probably not turbo lag, more the fact that the turbo doesn't work 
>> properly until around 2200 rpm and the throttle is very heavily damped by 
>> the ECU.
>
> Still I'd say there's something wrong.

Well I don't know, I've only got it for another 6 weeks then it's getting 
replaced.  It's only done 60000km and has been serviced properly at the 
right times by the official Opel dealer, so I think it's probably a 
"feature" of the car ;-)

I get the feeling the car is designed to be comfortable to drive, not to be 
very responsive.  Even if you sit at 2500rpm in 2nd gear, if you jump on the 
accelerator pedal you don't get any jolt of acceleration because the ECU 
smoothes out the throttle input, I'd say with a time constant of about 0.5 
seconds.  In some cars you can push the accelerator pedal up and down 
quickly and the car responds instantly with forward and back jolts, but not 
this car.

> Turbocharger actually removes some torque from the really-low revs ('bout 
> <1500rpm), after that it starts to wake up and gets torque much higher 
> than with naturally aspirated engine.

Makes sense.

> After driving 6 years with turbocharged cars, I wouldn't even think about 
> naturally aspirated one :p - once I got used to the sub-rev torqueloss, 
> I've just let myself enjoy the long and stable torque (expect for the 
> Audi, which has only a short spike of torque, but it's cheap to drive, 
> so...).

Give me a turbocharged petrol car and now we're talking :-)  I think the 
basic problem is that a turbo makes the engine only usable above certain 
rpms, and diesel makes the engine only usable below certain rpms.  So the 
combination of turbo diesel is a bit of a disaster compared to normally 
aspirated petrol.

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