2017 Audi R8 V10 Plus Price and Review - Part 2
2017 Audi R8 V10 Plus Price and Review - But competitors and potential customers alike ignore the R8 at their peril, on and off track. The previous R8 LMS race car won 24-hour races at Spa, Nürburgring, and Daytona International Speedway. The new generation track attacker has already followed in its tire treads by taking the flag at this year’s 24 hours at the ’Ring.
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| 2017 Audi R8 V10 Plus Price and Review |
Off the circuit, the road-legal R8 has been accessible and easygoing ever since its early days as a V-8-only model, and the new car continues that tradition. The chassis is gentle on passengers over awful pavement, even in Sport mode. We got lost on a one-lane dribble of road with great heaves and potholes, and we still maintained an even 40 mph. The nose sits high enough that you don’t need an automatic lift to negotiate curbs or debris.
Still this feat is less impressive today than in 2007 when Audi released the original R8. Porsche’s latest 911 Turbo is every bit as livable on a daily basis, but even the 911 GT3 RS we drove recently in Germany was comfortable enough to putter around town, which meant the new R8 had to surpass itself in several ways, most crucially in power and design.
2017 Audi R8 V10 Plus Price and Review
Audi no longer seems concerned about keeping horsepower to less than that of its VW Group-built cousin, the Lamborghini Huracán. The Plus model eclipses the Huracán’s 602 horsepower, and this time around Audi will not offer a V-8 variant (nor a gate-shifter manual). The “regular” 2017 Audi R8 has 540 hp and 398 lb-ft of torque, more than enough for any legal road, and it generally comports itself more handily. Pricing hasn’t been released for the States, but the difference between the regular and Plus models is around $20,000 for the present car. Either way, both variants will be priced well south of the Huracán’s $237,000-plus sticker.
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| 2017 Audi R8 V10 Plus Price and Review |
Regarding the R8’s updated design, the interior is surpassingly good, with a dash as low as the C7 Corvette Stingray’s, a sexy landscape of leather-coated contours, and a jutted-out instrument panel. The latter floats in front of the driver, a feature almost directly yanked from Audi’s Le Mans prototype cars. The steering wheel is crammed full of buttons, including the ignition, performance, and traction-control modes, and exhaust flaps. It took us only a short time before we could shift from comfort to sport modes without looking down. You could claim that Audi has taken a page from Ferrari here, but this too is a design feature of Audi race cars, with most everything that alters the actual driving modes centered on the wheel so you don’t have to take your hands off.
There is no longer a center navigation screen. Everything from the radio station to navigation now lives right in front of the driver on the instrument panel as part of the “virtual cockpit.” In navigation mode, the Google Maps-sourced visuals spread in front of you in real time, its satellite images mirroring the world outside. This looks fabulous, but it’s also distracting, as you have to look through the wheel at map details. To our mind the best option is a head-up display projected on the windshield as General Motors and BMW offer.
The exterior has gone for evolution rather than revolution, and that’s the greatest fail of the new generation. You can’t help but wonder if two designs were presented to the board, one wild and fun, and the other deliberately underplayed, and that the execs picked the safe choice. There’s nothing wrong with it — driving around to shouts and cellphone snaps proved the 2017 Audi R8 still has great stage presence — but nothing except the LED lighting scheme really hints at newness. There are differences, but they’re subtle. To make a bid for supercar status, subtlety is not the surest play.
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| 2017 Audi R8 V10 Plus Price and Review |
You discover the very best of the car when you’re inside the cockpit and out on real roads. The R8 eats up curving freeways at speeds of more than 120 mph with a smooth and stable ride and makes greedy work of winding hill climbs. On one of our final runs, we charged up a narrow two-lane track to a town called Montes de Cima (“Top of the Hills”). We’d driven the same road other times in a Porsche Cayman and a BMW M4. All three were seriously fast, but each was utterly different. The Porsche was best suited to the narrowness of the lanes but was unsettled by bumps in the asphalt. The BMW was a bully, shouldering through with maximum grunt and show-offy tail kicks. The Audi split the difference, mixing mid-engine finesse and all-wheel-drive precision with the V-10’s explosive charge, howling as we churned toward the sky with all four wheels slicing furiously at the asphalt.
It turns out the new R8 doesn’t go all that gently into the day, either. Audi R8 V10 Plus Price
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