2017 Audi R8 V10 Plus Price and Review - Part 1
2017 Audi R8 V10 Plus Price and Review - Do not go gentle into that good night. A new-age supercar should burn four wheels, as 10 cylinders rave on until close of day. Rage, rage against the prohibition on laser lights.
During two days in Portugal, on road and racetrack, through brightest day and deepest night, we tested the 2017 Audi R8. The mid-engine machine is poetry in motion: pleasing to the ear and exciting to the heart, potent yet effortless.
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| 2017 Audi R8 V10 Plus Price and Review |
Audi is best when it melds technology and soul in equal parts. The all-new, second-generation R8, which is coming to the Americas next spring, mostly achieves that elusive mandate. As for technology, everybody will be talking about those laser lights. But the R8’s naturally breathing 5.2-liter V-10 is the car’s essence, a soulful heart that spits verse every time it awakens.
First, let’s talk laser lights. Or laser spots, as Audi calls them. For an extra 3,200 euros, they are an option in Europe, though they’re still not legal in the U.S. The spots are contained within the regular LED housing and only activate at speeds above 37 mph and in situations with minimal ambient light, and they shine twice as far as regular high beams.
Audi wanted to show off its latest bit of vorsprung durch technik, so the company offered us the novel opportunity to drive on an unlit road course on a pitch-black night. The Autódromo Internacional do Algarve, in Portimão, is a sketchy track in the brightest of conditions. It’s full of gut-unsettling hills, most of them blind. The corners are high-speed and tricky, ending in hard downhill braking zones.
2017 Audi R8 V10 Plus Price and Review
In darkness it was downright devilish, nothing gentle about it. No matter how good they might be, no lights -- laser or otherwise -- can see over blind crests. Instead, we depended on our middling memory of the track, the chassis’ natural agility, and the car’s stout brakes.
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| 2017 Audi R8 V10 Plus Price and Review |
We were driving the R8 V10 Plus model, with 610 hp and 413 lb-ft of torque. Rolling out of the lighted pits and into the inkiness, it went something like this: Squint into the black and open up the V-10 to full throttle anyway. Convince your right foot to remain planted as you comet toward the blind brow of hill. Crest, and drop into darkness. Remain planted. Do not panic. Lost in the Algarve’s abyss, the car is picking up tremendous speed. Start to panic. The trick laser-aided headlamps are shining far ahead and finally illuminate orange cones that indicate the braking zone. As the 2017 Audi R8’s carbon-ceramic brakes snap your head forward, you bend around the tight corner and rush toward the next slope, the all-wheel drive push-pulling the car inexorably forward.
So, yes, laser lights are surely helpful in low-visibility situations. But the real takeaway here is the savagery and sound of the 2017 Audi R8’s V-10 raving behind our head, and the brakes’ unsettling deceleration. It’s true-blue, super sports-car stuff.
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| 2017 Audi R8 V10 Plus Price and Review |
A mild surprise is that this is only the second-generation R8, the first real reboot of the would-be, could-be supercar by Audi. In America, especially, it was proof that this European marque could tussle with Porsches. All those wins at Le Mans notwithstanding, most of our countrymen simply don’t equate Audi with high-performance street cars. Audi R8 V10 Plus Price
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