2nd gear in a petrol FR lets you hit 60-65, depending whether you hit the redline or not. That's going by the speedo which is always a few percent off though.
I'll prob be flamed to death for saying this
but I'm not convinced that diesels really have to be slower 0-60, its just that they're generally heavier, less powerful and often don't have suitable gear ratios, kind of like people have said above. If you evened out those things I think they'd be equivalent, I'm not convinced that high torque really creates problems getting power down. My thoughts are:
Torque is "turning force" of the engine, in other words the amount of power per rev. So something that produced half the torque would nonetheless produce as much force if it were revving twice as high.
The limitation with acceleration "off the line" in our front wheel drive cars is the grip from the tyres. They can only grip enough to transfer a certain amount of power. If we theoretically say this is 100 BHP for argument's sake, it makes no difference whether its from a more torquey diesel engine revving slightly lower, or a less torquey petrol engine revving a bit higher.