Road-raged and ready to rumble, the most recent version of the rabid car is about to hit the streets. But are you’re ready for the Audi R8? Are you ready for storming by on wide lanes to the scorns of the climate change activists down the road? Are you ready to drive what is, essentially, a legal monster?
Be ready to have your expectations blown away, as Audi usually likes to do that. The new Audi R8 V10 Plus has a 5.2 liter V10 engine, complete with natural aspiration, which can deliver 610 horsepower, along with a torque of 560 Nm. With all that, you’d expect to easily reach the 60 mph mark. And you do. In just 3.2 seconds.
Now, the normal version of the R8 can do that in 0.3 seconds more. It can boast up to 540 horsepower. Both cars have a top speed limit of around 200 mph. The Plus version can go up to 205. The differences although slight, can be felt, reviewers claim.
One of the first things you may be reminded of when you drive the vehicle, is that it shares quite a few parts with the Audi R8 that won the Le Mans. In fact, it was developed by the exact same team that worked on that car.
Therefore, if you’re feeling particularly adventurous, you could easily go for an endurance race with it. It seems like the kind of test the (former) guys from Top Gear would put the car to. And it’s pretty obvious, it would pass.
The Audi is surprising in some aspects. The normal R8 is just as good a road car as it is a tame car. It all depends on how one goes about driving it. Reviewers claim that at low speeds, this beast can behave. And although at every push of the pedal you feel its innards rumbling, asking you for more, it can be manageable. “Predictable” was the wording used.
One of the more interesting features of the R8s is the virtual cockpit, which had been previously introduced in the latest Q7 or the TT. It is a computer that could probably run the latest Call of Duty on extreme settings, but it won’t. It will, instead, show you interesting facts like tach/speedo numbers measured just about 60 times every second. And a big GPS, powered by Google Maps, which assures that you may never get lost in some off worldly plains.
The Audi R8 is looking good, and it comes at prices ranging from $180 thousand for the basic version, to $205 thousand for the Plus version (prices for the EU, US numbers have not been yet released).
Image source: cotswoldsupercars.co.uk
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