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It’s hard to see the R8 Spyder being anything other than a hit. The R8 still feels and looks mighty special even three years after launch and the arrival of the Spyder only polishes an already brilliant car. This is a wonderful car, that opens its soul at the drop of the roof, and shares the cadences of its charismatic V10 at the twitch of your toe.
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I’d personally do without the tacky carbonfibre effect trim on our test car and you’ll have to pack light with a tiny 100-litre boot in the nosecone.įrankly, we’re nit-picking however. The ventilation switches in front of the gearlever are all but inaccessible when you’re in first, third or fifth. But it doesn’t feel special enough in the cockpit compared with a comparably priced Porsche or Aston Martin, and there are numerous drawbacks. Is this the R8’s weak spot? On the one hand, I understand the need to recycle Audi parts bin stuff in here – it’s what enables projects like the R8. Our car was equipped with regular steel discs and wiped off that speed easily enough at the prod of the middle pedal. The R8 steers with a delicious precision and weight that tells you just enough about what’s going on and it’s fast-geared enough to enable flick-flacks through tighter corners.
#Audi spyder driver#
All the contact points with the driver are well judged, from the tactile, precise gearchange to the pedals that encourage blip-downchanges. So the V10 is monumentally fast, but it’s also involving. Not really my cup of tea on the open road to be honest. Jethro Bovingdon raves about its RWD feel and the lairier angles it affords. In my time with the car, I approached nowhere near its limits but the more road testery types at CAR will tell you how the chassis has incredible rear bias in extremis.
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Traction is peerless, letting you explore more of the brutal acceleration on offer, more of the time. With the roof down (a simple press of a button, all automated, very comfy and quiet with the rear window glass protector in place), there’s a cracking V10 soundtrack that encourages repeated 8000rpm visits.Īnd the handling? I assume it’s no A4 2.0 TDI stodge-wagon?Ĭorrect. The R8 simply flies to the horizon, your stomach’s left somewhere back in Cambridgeshire and the Audi hunkers down as the R8 spears through the air. Remember there’s Quattro traction underfoot. Enjoy the exquisitely engineered, six-fingered open gate as you do so, stolen straight from the design files at Maranello. Pootle along a country road in the R8 V10 Spyder, spot a straight and change down into third. You can drive the entry R8 really hard, most of the time. I mean, who would have thought any self-respecting road tester could call a 4.2 R8 slow? It’s not, of course, but its performance is just so perfectly judged. It’s a reflection on the widespread availability of manic power, from Evos to Subarus, fast Fords to any number of super saloons, that our relationship with speed has changed. Where the regular 4.2 V8 is, well – if not exactly slow, then certainly adequate – the V10 is mind-bogglingly fast. And look at those engine figures: 518bhp at 8000rpm – just hear it – and 391lb ft at 6500rpm. It won’t quite hit 200mph, but 62mph passes by in a eye-trembling 4.1sec.
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Study the spec sheet and you’ll be left in no doubt the convertible R8 is anything but a fully paid-up member of the supercar A-list.