This is a car to cherish. A dinosaur whose days are numbered.
Even before electrification becomes the norm for performance machinery, the large-capacity, multi-cylinder, naturally aspirated mid-engined supercar is already an endangered species, rapidly being overtaken by a turbocharged and hybridised near future.
This feels like a last hurrah. Perhaps that’s why its engine – a quad-cam, 40-valve, direct-injected 5.2-litre V10 – is so celebrated, sitting in state beneath a glass panel, its sculpted plenum chambers illuminated by LEDs with the R8’s taut shape seemingly stretched tightly around it.
Yet its artistry is far more than visual: flick that left-hand paddle a couple of times, let it rip out to 8500rpm and it sounds fantastic, a symphonic mechanical thrash that melds the guttural nature of a V8 with the shriek of early 2000s F1.
It’s utterly addictive. So it’s a bit of a shame you have to work so hard to hear it.
This is, after all, a car designed to be the final rung on the Audi latter, teetering a perilous height above the A4 2.0 TDi that got its owners started in the distant past.
