Audi R8 5.2 V10 FSI quattro review
Audi R8 5.2 V10 FSI Road Test
Test date 24 June 2009
Price as tested £109,090
For Towering performance, ease of use, relatively good value, forgiving handling
Against Looks divide opinion, control weights not quite right, not a £100k cabin
We will not be the first to observe that bigger is not necessarily better –that less is, indeed, very often more.
Which is why we treated news of the arrival of a 518bhp 5.2-litre V10 motor in the engine bay of the Audi R8 with more than a little circumspection. We didn’t feel the V8-powered R8 was a sluggard, and feared most of all what the extra power and weight of the V10 would do to the R8’s exquisite balance.
It’s also right to ask questions about the price. True, once you pick all the options on a V8 R8 that are standard on the V10, the price differential more than halves, dropping by exactly 10 grand to £9755, but that still prices the V10 at £99,580, less than an automatic dimming mirror beneath the hundred grand mark.
And you only need to get a little carried away before you’re looking at a car like the one pictured here and priced at £110,635. Add carbon brakes and paddle-shift gears and you’re past £120,000 in a trice.
Will the R8 turn out like many others in general and the Porsche 911 in particular: never more desirable than at its simplest, starkest best?
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