Audi makes history with awesome R8

We all know that exclusivity and excellence comes at a price, whatever commodity it is you would like to purchase, writes Declan Colley.

In the case of cars, of course, the price invariably accelerates quicker than the machine itself the more exclusive and excellent it is. Thus, at the upper reaches of the automotive scale, purchase costs can parlay into the stratosphere in very short order.

The Bugatti Veyron is a case in point. Even as the most powerful production car ever made and equipped with levels of technology that would make a jet airliner blanche, Volkswagen (which owns Bugatti) had to sell it at a significant loss - even with a price tag set at over €1m — just to have the satisfaction of a showcase product which it knew few competitors could or would ever match.

And they’re at it again with the Chiron which was displayed at Geneva and which is even madder and more expensive.

Rowing back a little to other upper-end VW-owned products such Bentley, Lamborghini and Porsche, the litmus test which proves that the superiority and distinction of their products also means that you have to shell out a hell of a lot of dosh to get one. Further down the VW food-chain at Audi, you expect to pay less, while at Volkswagen itself and others such as Skoda and Seat, you pay even less again.

However, once in a while the less exclusive brands in the company line-up are allowed to — as the late BBC commentator David Coleman once ill-advisedly said of a Cuban 400m runner — open their legs and show their class. And so it is with this week’s astonishing test car, the Audi R8, which the Ingolstadt company is now using to showcase just what it can achieve technologically when given the chance to, er, spread ‘em.

It would be churlish to maintain this thing is cheap — certainly not with a list price just shy of the 300k mark, but you do not generally anticipate shelling out that sort of gelt for an Audi.

You can, of course, pay a lot of money for certain of their products, but not the sort of lotto-winning money this thing costs. Were you to do so, however, you would be purchasing a stunning piece of kit which is notable not only for its’ beauty, but also its’ muscle, malevolence and downright murderous performance.

The original R8 was a relatively sane sports car which came at relatively sane money; the new one though has abandoned all vestige of normalcy and gone are such the V8 engine and the manual gearbox, to be replaced by a 610 bhp 5.2 litre V10 unit with a seven speed S-Tronic ‘box whose joint commitment to sheer performance is as shattering as it is visceral.

And with all due respect to commentators who have moaned in print they expected more pizzazz from this compelling machine, I would have to suggest that there is something seriously wrong with their metabolism, if not their sanity.

The R8 has gestated from being a mere sports car into something closer to a supercar and while undergoing this elemental process it has undoubtedly drawn a huge amount from Audi’s successes in the world of endurance racing, where the firm has pretty much dominated classics such as the Le Mans 24 Hour race for the past two decades. It has also leaned heavily on semi-sibling rivals such as the Lamborghini Huracan.

The combination of these things has elevated the car to a place in the performance pantheon to which it had never even previously aspired. It is now in direct competition with such as the Porsche 911 Turbo S, or even the McLaren 570S and the tallness of that order is not something that will see it withering on the vine attempting to achieve. Indeed it is half a second quicker 0-165 kph than the Porsche.

We were lucky enough to try the ‘Plus’ version and while the naked facts of this R8’s performance — 3.2 second 0-100 kph and a top speed of 330 kph — may not appear frighteningly startling on paper, in reality they are truly shocking. The sheer virility of this thing is, frankly, astounding. Slap-on-the-back-of the-head-with-a-shovel astounding. And then there’s the racket it makes as well.

When you press the red starter button on the steering wheel to fire up that V10 the electronics automatically rev. it to around 2,500 rpm, barking it into life with the sort of raspy growl that will, genuinely, frighten any unsuspecting bystander. By the time you wind up to the 8,700 rpm red line you will yourself think the end of the world is nigh and anyone watching you will think Armageddon has already arrived.

Funnily enough, when you are really on it in the R8 - or at least think you are, you can become imbued with a fine sense of impotence. There are two digital information elements in the virtual cockpit layout which inform you of the amount of power and torque you are using at any given moment. Even when you think you are ‘on it’ the power indicator may show that you are actually only utilising, say, 23% of power and 30% of torque.

Thus you’re hurtling down the road at a what you believe to be an unsustainable rate of knots and you’ve still to extract 77% of the power available; you’re then left thinking what a useless piece of dross you are as a driver, all the while you’re working harder behind the wheel and having every one of your senses shredded. Funny that.

In any event, even when you are hurtling down the road at what you believe to be an unsustainable rate of knots with the gears changing in a nanosecond and the power piling on amid the yowl of those ten hard-working cylinders, you are waiting for the back end to snap out of line and pitch you into eternity.

But there’s none of that nonsense. The R8 responds to every throttle and steering input by simply knuckling down to doing what you want it to do and gripping the tarmac with the level of intensity of a drowning sailor clinging to that last bit of wreckage.

The handling is as race-car as any race car I’ve ever encountered and Audi’s quattro system pays its way in spades, coping with multi-G forces straining to rip it away from where you want it to go. It is as if, as the great F1 champion Mario Andretti said of a championship winning car, “it’s painted to the goddam road.” Slightly scary maybe, but immensely impressive.

If there is any downside to the R8, it is the flocks of people it magnetically draws every time to come to a stop and the head-wrecking inquiries it naturally draws from them. It is not their fault they are sucked into its power-field like moths to a light; it is simply the manic attraction this magnificent machine engenders.

Of course, there is the price tag and if it is true to say that the further up the exotic car hierarchy you get, it is not so much the power-to-weight ratio that matters as much as the power-to-cash ratio, then the R8 fits right in.

Any fool could argue that no motor is worth anything like 300,000 snots, but for those lucky enough to have that sort of wedge, few will be disappointed.

The unearthly chorus of those 10 wailing cylinders; the carbon-fibered beauty of wings, airdams and diffusers; the amazing technological depths; the bottomless well of power; and, the wilful, visceral malevolence of it all, combine to provide near supercar levels of performance and I have to say that Audi has surpassed itself with this flabbergasting piece of kit.

Sell the wife/husband. Sell the house. Sell the kids. Sell the bloody lot. You won’t regret a bit of it.

Colley's Verdict

The Cost: from €231,500; €263,000 for the V10+ version - €296,859 as tested.

The Engine: A magnificent, screaming, wailing thing of beauty.

The Specification: Surprisingly, you can add great cost to the already great cost.

The Overall Verdict: Animal magic