Right. Before you read on you should nip out and buy a lottery ticket. The new Audi R8 will cost from €231,500 when it goes on sale, in September. Hmm. You might need to buy a few more lotto tickets, just to be on the safe side. Actually, €231,000 is just the starting point. If you want the V10+ version you'll have to fork out €263,000.
Once you've paid your money, you'll find that the R8 is actually sticking to quite an old script. While McLaren, Ferrari and Porsche have gone down the turbo or turbo-and-hybrid route to extract more power from less fuel, Audi is repeating the "stick a big engine in it and watch it go very, very fast" routine.
So the R8 in basic form – a relative term, relative . . . – uses a 5.2-litre V10 petrol engine developed with Lamborghini. With 532hp, it shoots to 100km/h in just 3.5 seconds, thanks in part to four-wheel-drive quattro traction off the line. Top speed is on the wicked side of 300km/h.
Not enough for you? The R8 V10+ has an extra 70hp, cuts 0.3secs from the 0-100km/h time and raises the top speed by 6km/h. Worth it? For bragging rights, possibly.
Both cars weigh about 50kg less than the old R8 V10, and all come with 19in wheels, LED lights, leather and a full-whack MMI+ infotainment system.
Christian Gussen, managing director of Audi Ireland, says the all-new R8 is "the zenith of Audi's commercial sports-car engineering and design. The second-generation Audi R8 is the fastest and most powerful commercial sports car that we have ever produced."
What won’t have escaped your attention are that lack of a hybrid version and the fact that the most basic V10 costs about €60,000 more than the old entry-level, 4.2-litre V8 R8, which was quick enough for most purposes.
More R8s are on the horizon, though. Audi has already announced the R8 e-Tron, which uses a battery stack and 500hp worth of electric motors to claim a touring range of more than 300km on one charge, which could put the electric cat among the hybrid pigeons. That will likely cost about the same as the V10, though, as electric drivetrains are far from cheap.
Affordable
Potentially much more affordable is a V6 turbo R8. Audi and Porsche are collaborating on a new turbo-charged 2.9-litre V6 engine, to replace the current 3.0-litre supercharged engine (found most commonly in the Audi S4 and Porsche Cayenne).
Why no new V8? Simple, really. It’s not a sop to Germany’s powerful environment lobby, as you might suppose, but a response to the significant tax cut-off for engines below 4.0-litres in China. Audi hasn’t officially confirmed that the V6 R8 is coming, but it’s more than likely in development for a late-2016 launch.
