Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Audi R8
But it was nothing to the car that was waiting for me in London. The Audi R8.
I had seen pictures of this mid-engined supercar and they left me underwhelmed. I thought it looked a bit boring, like a slightly bigger version of the TT. And it wasn’t going to be a real supercar, was it? Not when you remember Audi owns Lamborghini. I mean, why make a car to compete with your own brand? That’d be stupid. car rental uk national car rental
This view is reinforced when you climb inside. There are very few supercar extravagances. There’s no panic handle. No stitching made from yellowhammer feathers. No titanium machinegun triggers. It’s very grey, very Audi, very normal. And that’s fine, actually, because there are very few traditional supercar drawbacks either. alamo car rental
You can see out, there’s room for your head, even if you have truly enormous hair, and there’s space for briefcases and whatnot on a shelf behind the seats. It’s big in there; much bigger than you’d believe.
Then you set off and there are no histrionics. The exhaust makes a deep, meaningful rumble, but as is the way in Jaguar’s XK you can’t really hear it when you’re inside .car rental uk guy salmon
So it’s spookily quiet, and that’s just the start of it. Because it is also spectacularly comfortable. I don’t mean comfortable . . . for a sports car. I mean it’s so comfortable you can run over anything up to a medium-sized fox and not even notice. Couple this to the usual array of Audi in-car entertainment – sat nav, a hi-fi from Bang & Olufsen no less – and you have a car that, like the Porsche 911, you really could live with every day.
You needn’t even worry about the engine.car rental uk national car rental It’s not a W16 with eight turbos and plugs that foul themselves at every set of lights. It doesn’t run on fertiliser and grated tiger chippings. Instead, it’s the 414bhp 4.2 V8 from the RS 4. I’ve described this as one of the best engines made today and a drive in the R8 has not changed my mind. It does everything, brilliantly. car rental uk guy salmon
Of course, you cannot really expect a quiet, comfortable car with the engine from a saloon to perform well on a track. The suspension would be too soft. The power not quite grunty enough. The track is Lambo land. The Audi belongs in a city, soothing the fevered brow of the man with the midlife crisis, while massaging his ego, all at the same time. Wrong. Very, very wrong. In fact the Audi is outstanding when there’s nothing coming the other way. It’s not blisteringly fast. From rest to 120, it goes at almost exactly the same rate as the Porsche 911 Carrera S. And flat out it’ll be out of steam before it gets to 190. But to dismiss it for this is to miss the point.alamo car rental
I had seen pictures of this mid-engined supercar and they left me underwhelmed. I thought it looked a bit boring, like a slightly bigger version of the TT. And it wasn’t going to be a real supercar, was it? Not when you remember Audi owns Lamborghini. I mean, why make a car to compete with your own brand? That’d be stupid. car rental uk national car rental
This view is reinforced when you climb inside. There are very few supercar extravagances. There’s no panic handle. No stitching made from yellowhammer feathers. No titanium machinegun triggers. It’s very grey, very Audi, very normal. And that’s fine, actually, because there are very few traditional supercar drawbacks either. alamo car rental
You can see out, there’s room for your head, even if you have truly enormous hair, and there’s space for briefcases and whatnot on a shelf behind the seats. It’s big in there; much bigger than you’d believe.
Then you set off and there are no histrionics. The exhaust makes a deep, meaningful rumble, but as is the way in Jaguar’s XK you can’t really hear it when you’re inside .car rental uk guy salmon
So it’s spookily quiet, and that’s just the start of it. Because it is also spectacularly comfortable. I don’t mean comfortable . . . for a sports car. I mean it’s so comfortable you can run over anything up to a medium-sized fox and not even notice. Couple this to the usual array of Audi in-car entertainment – sat nav, a hi-fi from Bang & Olufsen no less – and you have a car that, like the Porsche 911, you really could live with every day.
You needn’t even worry about the engine.car rental uk national car rental It’s not a W16 with eight turbos and plugs that foul themselves at every set of lights. It doesn’t run on fertiliser and grated tiger chippings. Instead, it’s the 414bhp 4.2 V8 from the RS 4. I’ve described this as one of the best engines made today and a drive in the R8 has not changed my mind. It does everything, brilliantly. car rental uk guy salmon
Of course, you cannot really expect a quiet, comfortable car with the engine from a saloon to perform well on a track. The suspension would be too soft. The power not quite grunty enough. The track is Lambo land. The Audi belongs in a city, soothing the fevered brow of the man with the midlife crisis, while massaging his ego, all at the same time. Wrong. Very, very wrong. In fact the Audi is outstanding when there’s nothing coming the other way. It’s not blisteringly fast. From rest to 120, it goes at almost exactly the same rate as the Porsche 911 Carrera S. And flat out it’ll be out of steam before it gets to 190. But to dismiss it for this is to miss the point.alamo car rental
# posted by Liz Laurie @ 5:58 AM 
