The cockpit of the Audi R8 shows its true intentions even better than the exterior. It's more for gentlemen than drivers (which is not to say it's not superb on the track, see below). Proof of this is the fact that two golf bags can fit behind the seats. We guess this is a plus. It might come from the R8 being shaped like a racing car, with what used to be called a cab forward design, on a long wheelbase of 104.3 inches.
We can't understand why the gauges and instrumentation aren't cleaner or racier (but they are nicely backlit). They could be transplanted into a common luxury car.
We like the flat-bottomed steering wheel, allowing more kneeroom. And there's an excellent digital speed readout, between the tach on left and speedometer on the right. The numbers are big and red, and you can read them in the sun.
Even when the seats are slid all the way back, there's still room for a briefcase, also leaving tons of passenger legroom, although the wheelwell extends into the foot area. For the driver, the dead pedal squeezes the clutch or brake pedal.
There's a small oval rearview mirror that's almost retro, with good visibility through the glass out over the engine and tail. It's auto-dimming and anti-glare, with a digital compass display that's bright red and too big; it keeps catching your eye and making you think for a split second that you've been busted. How do these things get past Audi's own testers?
The bucket seats, most gorgeous in rich brown Alcantara leather, for that extra $5500, are easy to climb into, by plunking your butt down at 90 degrees to the car and then swinging your legs in. Reverse the process to climb back out, although you have to lift your butt over the hip bolstering; you can't just slide out, although there's a grab handle down by your knee that you can use to push on.
The seats are not as well-fitting as those in the Audi S6 with the V10 engine, and other high-performance Audi sedans that use the same seats. Shouldn't the most super car have the most super seats? But it does seem that the longer you're in them, the better they feel, though still only okay.
The dash is dominated by more horizontal slats, for the vents. The center stack slopes away from the driver at an angle, like an off-the-shoulder blouse. The optional navigation system usefully includes gas stations. The controls are simple, or can be, compared to other luxury Audis. Climate, for example, can be controlled by actual knobs. There are also steering wheel controls.
The cabin is well-finished. Ours had aluminum inlays on the doors and around the navigation screen, as well as some vinyl in shades of gray and black, and aluminum elsewhere. The headliner was a Cordova-like material, not expensive looking but nice in black. Alcantara leather is an optional headliner material. Expensive looking.
There are a few cubbies, both on the center stack and in the doors where there are long narrow pockets. The passenger's left elbow may fall into a big cupholder, while the driver's right elbow rests on the padded brake lever. There's no center console compartment, and the optional 6CD changer lies between the seatbacks.
The trunk in front has a capacity of 3.5 cubic feet, which is more than it sounds. With another 3.2 cubic feet behind the seats, there's plenty of room for a road trip for two.
We got about a dozen laps in the Audi R8 at Infineon Raceway in Sonoma, California, and despite what we said about the interior being designed for gentlemen rather than drivers, we have to say that the R8 might feel better on the track than it does on the road, at least with the R-Tronic sequential manual gearbox. Not that it doesn't feel good on the road, because this supercar is totally civilized, except for the rough R-Tronic. And it's versatile, with shock absorbers (and the R-Tronic) that have two electronic settings, for Sport and not Sport. We also got about 200 wonderful miles on northern California freeways and uncrowded winding roads.
The engine is eminently drivable at around-town speeds, and understated at cruising speeds. Yet it's a racing-bred engine, aluminum block and heads, and a dry-sump oil system that only racing engines have. Above cruising speeds, redline is a fantastic 8250 rpm, where the rev limiter makes a gentle sputter.
But the Ferrari F430 has a better howl, and the Corvette Z06 a better rumble. Even the Audi RS4, using the same engine as the R8, has a better growl. That's a letdown. Maybe it's because you hear so much intake noise from the R8 engine, located behind your ears.
And it's not just from the driver's seat; when the R8 is being revved across a parking lot, it might not even catch your ear as something exotic. It's got almost a whizz, as if there were fans in the exhaust pipes. There are actual valves in the exhaust system that only open up under full throttle, which explains its understated rumble. When cruising, there's a slight hiss in your left ear from wind noise, but it's forgotten.
The R8 does roar when you floor it, and it takes off like a rocket. It will accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in about 4.4 seconds. That's slower than a Porsche 911 Turbo, Lamborghini Gallardo or Corvette Z06, but faster than almost anything else you could name. And besides, who's counting. Not Audi. They're boasting about the incredible aluminum space frame, and rightly so.
This engine is a high revver. We can't believe we're about to quibble with the torque, when there are 317 pound-feet of it, but if you want to pass a car going uphill at 3000 rpm in fifth gear and feel too lazy to downshift, the R8 won't take off like a rocket. That's because those full 317 pounds aren't reached until 4500 rpm. We don't know how much torque is available at 3000 rpm, but even 4000 rpm isn't quite enough; we floored it at 4000 rpm in third gear, and then 5000 rpm in third, and there's a big difference.
The R-Tronic transmission works better on the track than it does on the street, because the faster it shifts, the better it feels. Around town, the shifts aren't very smooth, whether you're making them yourself or leaving it in the automatic mode. There's rocking with each shift, because of the pause and grab. Audi's similar DSG, or Direct Shift Gearbox, as used in the A3 (and VW GTI and R32) is beautifully smooth; but it won't hold up against this much horsepower. Hence, the R-Tronic.
The shifts are smoother when it's not in Sport mode, but not smooth enough to solve the problem. And in fact, to set the transmission in automatic and sport is incompatible. It contradicts the car's senses (sensors), and doesn't complement any rational driving style. If you're going for sport mode, you want to be in manual.
In automatic, the program reads your alleged driving style at any given moment, but not very well. It's impossible to say here when the shifts take place, because they keep changing. We watched once, between redlights, and the R8 upshifted at 12 mph, 18 mph, 26, 34 and into sixth gear at 45 mph. Not what we would have chosen. Another time it hit sixth gear before 40 mph. And then it wouldn't kick down when more gas was applied.
When it kicks down in automatic, it sounds and feels totally like an automatic transmission. Not a supercar. However, sometimes, if the kickdowns are aggressive, it will blip. Definitely not something that automatic transmissions do. Even in the automatic mode, when you slow down for a stop sign it will downshift all the way through the gears. Who needs it? The R-Tronic is easily confused. If you move between stoplights, and your acceleration isn't consistent because for example you're trying to find holes in traffic, it starts to do strange upshift things. It's trying to figure you out without having your vision. It's a problem in the brave new world.
The small paddle shifters (left is downshift, right is upshift), like almost all of them, aren't easily reachable with your hands on the steering wheel at 10 and 2 o'clock. You can reach them if you grip the steering wheel at 3 and 9, but then you can only wrap your thumb around the wheel. However, we rode along at Infineon (aka Sears Point raceway in Sonoma, California) with one of the instructors at the Jim Russell Racing School there, a pro racer, and he had no problem, because he held the steering wheel so relaxed and loose in his hands, at 3 and 9. Another common problem with paddle shifters is that you lose them in sharp turns, when your hands are moving around on the steering wheel. So you can't effectively accelerate hard while you're turning hard, unless you're in automatic mode.
So, with the R-Tronic, we used the old-fashioned shift lever. It's got a nice shape.
As for the track time, everything about the R8 feels better at speed, especially the R-Tronic. Full-throttle upshifts at 8000 rpm were a quick snatch. Because Infineon Raceway is smooth, the suspension wasn't challenged by bumps. The exhaust rumble was better, because we were hard on the gas so much. However, we also got some laps in the RS4, confirming its better rumble.
In the Manual mode, the R-Tronic is obedient. We once mistakenly upshifted into sixth gear, intending to downshift into fourth, and it allowed us the error. That means it will also short shift, which some manual automatic transmissions, in their misguided programming, won't allow. In Manual mode, it doesn't want to do a lot of quick downshifts. It can't always go from sixth to third the way a manual gearbox can. Or rather, it might make one big jump from sixth to third. But when it does do quick downshifts, it executes far smoother than a human can, including double-clutching and double-blipping. In the downshift department, the SMG wins hands down.
We also got seat time in an R8 with the six-speed manual transmission, which was disappointing for different reasons. It's a gated shifter, similar to what's found in the Lamborghini and Ferrari. It makes an aluminum clack with each shift, like someone eating soup and hitting the spoon on their teeth. And the stiff spring load was awkward. The shift lever is pulled to the neutral middle (between third and fourth) from each end, rather strongly. It's too easy to shift from fourth to third instead of fifth, because you have to keep pressure to the right. Or from fifth to fourth instead of sixth, because the lever is pulled back in. Heel-and-toeing can be tricky because the pedals are squeezed. One time the right side of our clutch shoe came down on the left side of our brake shoe, mashing on the brakes when all we wanted to do was downshift.
The brakes work best when they're used hard. They're fairly sensitive and not progressive at low speed, so around town you have to apply them gently or the car might put your nose into the steering wheel. But that problem goes away when they're used harder. That same driving instructor/ pro racer who took us around Infineon showed us what the brakes were really capable of. They're track worthy, with eight-piston front vented discs and four-piston rear vented discs.
The R8 is a good car for left foot braking, especially with the R-Tronic. Because the throttle response is smooth, it's rhythmic. Maybe the most fun you can have in the R8 is driving through a series of curves in the same gear, say third, playing back and forth with your two feet between the brake and gas pedals. Beautiful.
On dry level roads, the quattro all-wheel-drive system divides the power 90-10 (percent) to the rear wheels, but moves to 65-35 according to traction needs. Between this versatility and the balance over the axles thanks to the mid-engine mounting, the cornering is fairly fabulous and supercar-ish. The full underbody diffuser keeps the R8 hugging the road at very high speeds.
It's possible to get the tail-end out, especially if you hammer the throttle out of a slow turn, which we once did, but the stability control jumped in and said no way, by cutting the throttle.
But around Infineon, we found the stability control to be set high enough that it didn't intrude too much, except on the exit of one turn where the R8 understeered if you didn't hold back on the throttle and wait for the traction to catch up.
Behind the shift lever, there are three buttons, for the spoiler, shock absorbers and transmission. The adaptive suspension perpetually adjusts the electromagnetic shock absorbers to the road, in either Comfort or Sport modes. We didn't try Comfort on the track, but we did try Sport on the road, and we couldn't tell much difference. It was firm but not harsh in Comfort, and it wasn't uncomfortable in Sport, even over some rough freeway spots.
We did detect the nose dancing up and down more in Sport, but it didn't translate to a rougher ride. The faster we went, the more it wanted to twitch, but not in a bad way. And it did get airborne over a rise, once. It might not have done that in "comfort," as most drivers wouldn't find that comfortable. We loved it, but that's us.