Coming up with the R8, Audi suddenly places itself in a category beyond that of BMW, Jaguar, Mercedes and Lexus and joins a whole different kind of company in terms of competition, and that is that of Lamborghini, Maserati, Aston Martin and others.
The R8 is a different kind of Audi, much different than the now famous but tired Audi TT. It's a car for those who enjoy driving fast and most likely will sell more models in Europe where the autobahns are the dream of American drivers that own one of these cars.
I first saw the R8 at a showroom in Denver and I thought at first it was just a concept car, showing it's powerful engine through the back window. But then I started seeing one here and there go by and couldn't help but turn my neck around as if staring at the girl from Ipanema.
The design is very tasteful both inside and out and taking it for a test drive was like having a delicious ice cream for the first time as a kid or even better but the words I want to use would not be proper for this article. The car handles as it should. Perfect. No curve is too fast for this ride and I would say that it is one of the most desirable cars in production in the world today. The price tag is also extremely reasonable for a car of its kind at "only" $100K. That is well less than if you compare it to some Ferraris and Aston Martin cars that don't come home with you for less than $200K so it's actually quite "affordable".
The car has such a serene handle on the road it seems to have been attached to it but some futuristic technology like electromagnets holding it tight to the asphalt. Well, it actually is! The Audi R8 has electromagnetic dampers which can be adjusted by the driver, or should we say pilot? The driver can adjust for more day to day handling of for shredding performance whatever you should choose, you can tell your R8 what you want and it will glide over whatever the surface is as if it was driving on perfect roads. The car is so well designed and the quattro Audi technology is so tightly built into this powerful machine that the driver will only need to use brakes in the tightest of curves. With a 4.2 liter V8 engine which in turns gives out 420 horsepower of pure driving excitement, you can achieve 60 mph in only 4.4 seconds.
If I had the $100 thousand dollars to shell out, I would be rushing to the dealership right now to get my red version of one.
