Driving Sports

It's no secret that I would sell my left toe for an Audi R8. To me, it's a nearly perfect car: reasonable enough to drive every day, yet with enough speed, power and agility for those moments when, well, you just want to drive a supercar. Though I've never complained about the original R8's "mere" 420-hp V8, one can hardly bemoan when more zing is added to an already zesty peanut.

Therefore, you won't hear us complaining regarding Audi's newly-announced, 525-hp V10 version of its already quite fast R8. The new model will be available in 2009 as a 2010 model and beats the previous car's 4.6-second 0-60 speed, with a face-ripping claimed time of a mere 3.9 seconds. The number of street legal cars this quick can be counted on a single hand. It's such a powerful setup, a similar mill will be used to push the RWD race-spec R8 in GT3 competition.

Buyers of the $185,000 (estimated based on the announced price of EUR 142,400 for the euro-spec model, shown) R8 5.2 FSI quattro will be able to choose from a notchy 6-speed manual or a sequential R-Tronic gearbox. If the R-Tronic behaves anything like it does on the original R8, I'd suggest going with the manual 'box.

Will more power improve the beast? I'd probably say yes, however, when you start taking about this stratosphere of the performance envelope, I do have concerns that the day-to-day balance of the R8 may have been tossed out the window. Look for the full Driving Sports review sometime in 2009.

Geeky tech bits from the release included after the gallery, below:

The Audi R8 5.2 FSI quattro rockets from zero to 100 km/h (62.14 mph) in 3.9 seconds. In the version with the sequentially shifting R tronic it reaches 200 km/h (124.27 mph) in another 8.1 seconds. Even then its propulsive power hardly lessens: it's sufficient to reach a top speed of 316 km/h (196.35 mph). The immense force, the spontaneity and the thrust of the acceleration, plus the sound of the engine - all these impressions coalesce into a breathtaking sports car experience. The V10 plays a concert with growling bass tones and powerful high notes, which grows into a grandiose fortissimo as the engine revs up. This sonorous acceleration doesn't reach its limit until 8,700 rpm.

The 5.2-liter powerplant uses direct injection according to the FSI principle developed by Audi. A common rail system injects the fuel into the combustion chambers with up to 120 bar of pressure. Direct injection reduces the susceptibility to knocking and provides a certain amount of cooling through the evaporation of the fuel, which in turn supports a high compression ratio of 12.5:1. This in turn contributes to superior performance and improves fuel economy. The R8 V10 with R tronic gets by on an average of 13.7 liters per 100 km (17.17 US mpg).