Twenty years on from its conception, the Audi R8 will soon be retired. How far has Audi’s mid-engined flagship come, and how does old compare to new?
It’s hard to believe, but conceptually, the Audi R8 is 20 years old. It was at the 2003 Frankfurt Motor Show that Audi debuted a concept car called the Le Mans quattro, a name that celebrated Audi’s three successive victories at the eponymous 24-hour race between 2000 and 2002 with the R8 Le Mans Prototype.
This car landed as the Volkswagen Group’s era of Ferdinand Piech-led pomp and ambition was nearing its peak. It was experimenting with all kinds of wild engine configurations. Audi now sat squarely alongside BMW and Mercedes as one of the ‘Big Three’ German premium brands. The group had acquired Bentley and Lamborghini and were now aggressively modernising them. The era-defining Bugatti Veyron was just a couple of years off resetting everyone’s ideas of what a road car was capable of.
Then, there was the Le Mans quattro. Audi had been flirting with the notion of a mid-engined flagship supercar for a long time, testing the waters with concepts like the dramatic Avus Quattro from 1991 and the… challenging-looking Rosemeyer from 2000. The twin-turbo V10-powered Le Mans was the latest in this line. Audi’s press release at the time described it as a ‘concept study’, and made no reference to any production intent, but it didn’t take an industry expert to spot that the usual flights of concept car fantasy were missing.
Sure enough, come the 2006 Paris Motor Show, a production car that looked a lot like the Le Mans quattro appeared on Audi’s stand, now with a V8. Its name? Still a reference to Audi’s Le Mans success: while the R8 race car was about to be retired after six hugely successful years, its name would live on with the brand’s flagship road car.
Back in 2006, nobody really knew what to expect from the R8. Yes, Audi had had racing success in rallying and then sportscar racing, but their road cars were… sensible. They’d built their reputation on build quality and the benefits of a permanent four-wheel drive system. Sure, they’d made fast versions of their cars, but they were almost always safe, effective but comparatively unexciting ways of covering ground quickly. There’d been glimmers of brilliance – the RS2, the original TT, and most notably the B7-generation RS4.
Still, nobody was quite sure if the production R8 would cut it. Here was an Audi – maker of safe, sturdy family wagons and exec expresses – with a 4.2-litre, naturally-aspirated V8 shoved behind the driver and a dramatic, cab-forward side profile. It even had a full on, click-clack open-gate manual gearbox like a Ferrari. Was this really going to challenge the likes of Porsche?
The cynics were quickly silenced. In its early, 414bhp V8, manual form, the R8 is transcendental. When it launched, the car industry was at a tipping point between analogue and digital, and the R8 feels as though it sits at the fulcrum.
It was pitched as an ‘everyday’ sports car, picking up the baton dropped by the then-recently discontinued Honda NSX. Brief: nailed. There are no low-speed histrionics around town, with friendly steering and clutch. Forward visibility is wonderful, and the seats are chunky and cossetting on long drives.
A risk of it leaning too far toward the ‘everyday,’ then? Not really. Get it out of town, and the R8 comes vividly alive. The engine that was placid and pliable around town suddenly takes on a harsh, racing-tinged bark as it screams towards a scintillating 8250rpm redline. Hydraulic power steering was very much still the norm at this point, and indeed the R8 uses it. It’s not the most feelsome system ever, but it’s beautifully geared for quick driving. The car is largely unphased by broken, lumpy roads, if not exactly flowing over them with Alpine-like grace. The Quattro system inspires confidence without ever feeling like it’s overpowering or dulling the chassis’ natural ability to respond and rotate.
And the gearchange. That gearchange. Everything about it is as near to perfection as a manual gearshift can get – the immaculately-judged weight of the lever, the slickness of the action across the gate, the unmistakeable ‘tink-tink’ of metal against metal. It turns a basic mechanical process into one of the most joyously sensuous experiences it’s possible to have in a car.
When the R8 launched, there were some who argued it lacked the visual drama a mid-engined sports car should have, and it was certainly more restrained than some of the proper exotica of the time. Subsequent versions of the first-gen car got ever bigger, flashier wheels, blingier lighting signatures and more aggressive styling. To our eyes, those later cars quickly ended up looking a little chintzy and dated, while this original, basic V8 just gets better and better. It’s a brilliantly resolved piece of design that stands up as well now as it did 20 years ago when the Le Mans quattro previewed it.
This R8 – Audi UK’s heritage car – is the original UK press car, the one you saw Jeremy Clarkson skidding about Dunsfold all those years ago, and in basically every retrospective magazine test since. It’s accrued 60,000 miles in its 15-year life, with some characteristic marks to show. The bare metal gearknob has been scratched up by countless wedding rings, and the black leather seats look a little baggy, but the interior has held up well – certainly no worse than a 15-year-old A6.
The first-gen R8 was in production for an impressive nine years, during which time the range ballooned. In 2009, a V10 engine was introduced as the range-topper, borrowing its naturally-aspirated 5.2-litre engine from the Lamborghini Gallardo, and remarkably still available as a manual. This elevated the R8 from top-end sports car to something designed to take on the genuine exotica of the day. A Spyder followed, and then a couple of facelifts and some run-out specials before, in 2015, a second-generation car appeared.
The second R8 immediately positioned itself as a genuine supercar contender. Gone were the V8 and the manual gearbox. The only drivetrain option was the V10, with 532bhp in its most basic form. This was paired exclusively to a seven-speed dual-clutch and, initially, Audi’s staple Quattro system.
Then, in 2017, Audi did something unexpected, something they’d never done in their then-52-year history as a car company. They made a rear-wheel-drive car. The R8 RWS (Rear-Wheel Series) was initially a limited-run thing: 999 units, split between Coupés and Spyders. It won praise for its relative simplicity, and so, when the range was facelifted, the rear-drive option made a return on a series production car.
The bronze-wheeled, battleship grey car you see here is one of those: an R8 V10 Performance RWD Edition (the ‘Edition’ part of the name signifying some black and carbon bits on the exterior and a B&O sound system).
It’s a more menacing-looking thing, 2018’s model-wide facelift bringing in some Lambo-ish creases and angles (neither brand will admit it, but the R8 and Lamborghini Huracán are very close cousins, if not quite siblings). It’s certainly a big leap from the smooth, restrained lines of the original car.
Despite the aggro looks, the everyday usability that was such a big part of the first car is still there. The R8 has always maintained a higher, less aggressively raked roofline than other mid-engined supercars, and it makes a world of difference for visibility, which remains brilliant in the new car. It still rides along crap British roads with aplomb, too. The sport bucket seats fitted to this R8 – and indeed all R8s since the deletion of non-Performance models – are on the snug and firm side, though.
It’s a modern-day Audi, so interior quality is brilliant – no surprises there. What is a pleasant surprise is the total lack of a touchscreen. Obviously, this car was introduced back in 2015 when this infuriating trend wasn’t so widespread. It’s refreshing that Audi have resisted the urge to add one with a facelift though, instead keeping all the major controls on simple, physical dials and buttons. Things like in-car entertainment and sat-nav are handled within Audi’s much-lauded configurable ‘Virtual Cockpit’ gauge cluster.
So, it’s still a good everyday car, if you can stomach a claimed combined mpg of 22.4. How about its supercar credentials? They’re a little more… mixed. That naturally-aspirated engine is surely one of the last of its kind, and it’s wonderful to use. The powerband is accessible and linear, and the noise is sonorous.
It’s not quite spine-tingling, though. Inside the car and out, it sounds a little muted and undramatic for something with 10 cylinders, zero turbos and 562bhp. You could blame this on modern-day noise regulations, but listen to a Lamborghini Huracán – a car which uses the same engine, don’t forget – and you’ll wonder how the Italians made it sing when the Germans could only manage a loud hum. On the other hand, you could argue that it plays into the car’s everyday ability: Lambos are for people who want to be peacocks; the R8 is more like a peregrine falcon – deadly quick and effective, but from a distance, it could pass for a pigeon. Or a TT.
The thing is, the old car had a Jekyll-and-Hyde personality, coming alive when pushed. The new one just seems to want to be Jekyll all the time. Despite the charismatic engine, and the single driven axle, it’s surprisingly undramatic. It rarely gives the impression that there’s a properly playful supercar buried beneath the serious, straight-faced façade, and the rear-drive characteristics are kept largely reined in.
The loss of the manual was pretty much inevitable for the second-gen car, but Audi could have brought some of that brilliant tactility back with some long, well-actioned shift paddles. Instead, you find yourself clicking at a pair of fairly sad little paddles that feel like the ones from a DSG Golf GTI. It makes changing gears such a non-event, when it was such a life-affirming experience in the old manual car. It’s only a little detail, but it’s an example of how, as the R8 has grown and become an ever-greater performance prospect, little elements of character have been chipped away.
And soon, it will be gone. After this year, the R8 will end production, a sonorous V10 supercar no longer having a place in an Audi range that’s increasingly focused on electrification and crossovers (quelle surprise – don’t hate the player, hate the game).
The two-decade-old concept of a mid-engined Audi flagship super sports car isn’t exactly going out with a whimper. The latest R8 is a beautifully engineered and highly entertaining all-round talent. But that first car? The one with more than 100 less bhp and two fewer cylinders? It’s a revelation, and the one our hearts yearn for. Especially with three pedals and a big, silly metal wand protruding from between the seats. Plus, who doesn’t want to drive Iron Man’s car?
