Audi R8 V10 - video road test

Audi R8 V10 Road Test Video

Introduced officially at the Detroit Motor Show this year, Audi’s stunning V10 R8 has had plenty of coverage in the press, on the web and on TV. From letting you know that the car was about to launch, to galleries full of pictures of the R8 V10, and even a track video of the car, we’ve tried to keep you up to speed on what’s going on. We even brought you Audi’s advert for the R8 V10 taking the ‘Michael’ out of Ferrari.

So it only seems right that we should let you have a look at the Video Road Test of the Audi R8 V10 recently shown on UK TV by Channel Five on their Fifth Gear Motoring Show. Are we jealous? You bet! But it got us thinking.

Just how much research do the Fifth Gear guys do? The presenter on this piece is trying a bit too hard to be a ‘TG’ type presenter, but doesn’t quite pull it off. He says the Audi R8 V10 is aimed at people like him (yeah, right!). But he reckons that the R8 V10’s not worth the extra money over the V8 version. A fair enough point if you just grab the price list and conclude you’re paying more than £22k extra for two more cylinders.

But when we looked at the Audi R8 V10 specs back in January, we soon realised you need to do a little more than grab a brochure and look at a price list. No one in their right mind would ever buy an Audi R8 V8 without speccing it up. They might be able to live with it, but when they tried to sell it no one would buy. So you need to spend money on top of the standard car to get something that lives up to the promise and which you can sell easily when the time comes to change. But of course, if the R8 is aimed at Mr Fifth Gear he’d know that, wouldn’t he?

But the R8 V10 gets all the bits (well, most of the bits) you would want and need on the R8. And if you take the cost of those off the price difference between the R8 V8 and V10 versions the price difference shrinks to just £11k. £5,500 per cylinder.

Which in our eyes makes the V10 version of the R8 a no-brainer. But maybe that’s why we’re on the web and not on the telly. And obviously the Audi R8 V10 isn’t aimed at people like us.

(Note from Ed: Publicly aired sour grapes – and winding up Jonny Smith – just because Audi hasn’t given us an R8 V10 yet are not a pretty site!!)