Having taken out a nice 2003 2.5 Sport before buying our 3.0, my opinion is the the extra 40bhp is really noticeable, almost the same difference between the 3.0 and the 4.0 but without the extra weight of the V8. Not that the 2.5 is slow, but the 3.0 is actually quite fast! I held out for a 3.0 manual Sport, and I'm glad I did