Audi R8 5.2 V10 FSI quattro
Spyder R tronic review
by Mike Grundon (10 November 2010)
"You've driven the Spyder? Oh God, you lucky bugger." Even people who think they care nothing about cars know about the Audi R8 Spyder. They've seen it on TV, they've read about it in newspapers and in my experience they universally love it, even if to date they've always insisted a car is just "to get from A to B".
At £121,970 on the road, this test car I have here is the most expensive production Audi ever built. Describing it in a single breath would take a good set of lungs. It's a two-seat, soft-topped sports car with a high-revving, mid-mounted 5.2-litre, V10 petrol engine pushing 518bhp and 391lb/ft of torque through an electronic automatic/sequential gearbox to a four-wheel drive system and into the blacktop through 19" rims and massive 235/35 Pirellis at the front and even huger 295/30s at the back. It'll sprint to 62mph in 4.1 seconds, pass through 124mph after 12.4 seconds and go on to a prodigious top speed of 194mph. The car's body is mostly made of aluminium but it still weighs over 1.7 tonnes.
Awesome as all those figures are, what makes this such an all-round winner with the citizenry is it's seductive appearance. It's a little less gregarious than its hard-top sister in that there's no glass window on the massive engine in the back and it's unencumbered by the opinion-dividing, contrasting colour "sideblade" on the flank.
What it has is spadeloads of class. Approach it from the front and the menacing look from those narrow LED-trimmed headlights and the big grille with a deep air-dam are all shared with the hard-top. The only difference is the silvered frame around the windscreen.
Come around the side and the black fabric top is a short and rounded cup from the windscreen over to just behind the front seats. There's a big air intake for the engine, gaping in the leading edge of the rear wheelarch. There's a pair of raised and silvered strips of ventilation louvres trailing and tapering down the rear hood from behind each of the occupants' heads. At the back there are two massive oval exhaust ports emerging from the bodywork and big ventilation grilles to let the heat escape that brute of an engine.
Open the sculpted door (it forms an integral part of the air-intake channel down the flank) and you settle into a surprisingly roomy feeling cockpit. Your feet are down under a carbon-fibre arch which encompasses the dial cowls and the car information displays. The steering wheel is sculpted for grip and has the R8 signature flat bottom to it. It's smart but there’s nothing intimidating about this cockpit, even though it holds the key to high adventure.
Putting the hood back is as simple as thought. Pull up the button in the centre console and hooks release and bits of bodywork behind you become detached and rise up to accommodate it. The whole thing, including the heated glass window, folds flat and stows away totally out of sight. I'm told it can be done while on the move at speeds up to 31mph. I haven't been brave enough to try it.
To say this car is a head-turner is just stating the bleeding obvious. Even crawling through the traffic in town or tooling around the suburbs, everyone takes a look. If you're slow enough for people to speak, they'll chat to you – ask you questions, make comments about your steed. I'd love the car just for that. It's a bridge to people who would otherwise never give you a second look, never mind a word of friendship.
But it's not just about seeing and being seen. Out there on the open road, where it's just you, the machine and the metalled strip, that's where the Spyder comes alive. It's wide, it's low, the suspension and steering are firm, its weight balance is only marginally biased to the rear, and it's got all-wheel drive. How do you think it handles? You don't need me to tell you the grip is exceptional, the ride is level round corners and the needle on the funometer is being bent against the stop-pin at maximum.
The R tronic gearshift is Audi's racy version of the S tronic so you can shift gears either fully automatically or by ratcheting sequentially up and down using either the stubby joystick with a knurled metal gearknob or the paddles under the steering wheel. You also get a chance to choose your performance and handling set up by stabbing a yahoo button (Audi calls it the Sport button) which makes the gearbox hold onto lower gears for longer and so feeds you more power when you need it. You can also stiffen up the already firm suspension to make corners even flatter than ever.
Selecting all the performance options and squeezing down the throttle produces the sound and energy of a small explosion. The Spyder has acceleration like a jet fighter, but much better brakes. Where you have room to play and a road that needs lots of sequential gearshifts, it's hard to stay cool and not grin. There's an exceptionally opulent Bang and Olufsen sound system in the car, but who needs it with ten tuned cylinders performing live in close harmony just a couple of feet behind you?
I'm being honest when I say that despite all the electronic gizmos and race-style gearshifts, I don't like the R tronic as much as the manual gearshift. With the latter you get to click the stick through big open slots in a milled metal gate plate. It's quick and slick and while on paper it doesn't give you any performance advantage, the car feels much lighter than the R tronic version, although in truth it's only carrying 5kg less.
One thing I find amazing on this £122,000 car is that the ignition key is as dull, dusty and irritating as the thing that fires up my 12-year old Range Rover. It sticks in a Precambrian-style keyhole above your right knee, just where the fob can dangle and dig into your leg. Why can't it be like some other Audis and have a tiny black and chrome box you slip into a hole high in the dash and press like an engine start/stop button? And there's a big handbrake lever too! Why not a tidy little electronic handbrake button like its lesser siblings?
Like its hard-topped sister R8, the Spyder has the legs to eat up the motorway miles across Europe in no time, then has the agility to wring maximum fun from the serpentine Alpine roads when you get there. Unlike its sister, this car also gives you the chance to properly take the air, smell the trees, hear the birds and feel the life-giving sun on your pale North European skin.
Like I say, having tried both versions, I would choose the manual gearbox over this R tronic semi-automatic. It's more fun and it would also save me almost £5500 which I could spend on a few gallons of petrol to help cope with the average fuel consumption of just 19mpg.
I'll never own one, but it's nice to know the V10 R8 Spyder is out there making the world a prettier and more interesting place. Nobody needs a car like this but if you can afford one, how can you live without it?
Second Opinion: Convertibles are compromises. The R8 Spyder is slower and more expensive than the coupé, and you can feel that its structure is not as rigid. With the roof down it gives an experience which is in some ways less dramatic than that of the coupé too. But for all that it's still a wonderful car, and although I wouldn't choose it myself I did enjoy tootling around (and occasionally blasting around) with the wind in my hair. It helped that I drove it on a warm day, but if you can afford the Spyder you can also afford to take it to where the good weather is. David Finlay.
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