Audi R8 V10 Plus: A week with Tony Stark’s ride

ars.AD.queue.push(["xrailTop", {sz:"300x251", kws:["bottom"], collapse: true}]);I'll be honest with you: the 2015 Audi R8 wasn't a car we were intending to review. It's an outgoing model. The first R8s hit the street way back in 2007, so there isn't really much clever new technology for me to write about. I hadn't even scheduled a loan of the press car; an e-mail telling me it was being delivered was the first anyone at Ars knew we'd have a week with an R8 V10 Plus. But when there's a bright red mid-engined sports car parked outside your house you may as well drive it, and if I was going to drive it I may as well write about it, so here we are.

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The R8 first appeared in 2006. It took its name from Audi's Le Mans racer, one of the most dominant racing cars ever to turn a wheel. The R8 was near-unbeatable for a five year stretch beginning in the year 2000, even when hobbled by power-sapping air restrictors. Audi wanted to celebrate (and capitalize on) its racing success, leveraging the hard-won credibility of the R8 name and the fact that it now owned Lamborghini to create the company's idea of the every day sports car—something to rival Porsche's ubiquitous 911.

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The R8 took the Lamborghini Gallardo's extruded aluminum spaceframe and all-wheel drive system as a starting point. The chassis got expanded it a bit in the interest of interior space, and Audi swapped out the Italian engine for a direct injection (FSI in Audi-speak) V8, the company having proven FSI engines with the racing car. Before long the V8 was joined by a 5.2l V10 engine with more than 500hp (372kW), a credible answer to the question "can you build an everyday supercar?" It's the ultimate expression of that car that we've been driving, the R8 V10 Plus.