Elana Scherr: One Last Drive in the Audi R8

The Audi R8 is having a long goodbye. We’ve been expecting an announcement of its departure for almost a year. Our last review declared it “most of the way to retirement.” And that was in December 2021.

Not that we want to hurry it along—there’s already a dangerous shortage of naturally-aspirated thunder in our lives, and we have no desire to see the R8 rumble off into the sunset. Of course, if our desires dictated the car market, then you’d all be driving station wagons with 800 horsepower, and they would be brown. It doesn’t take any skill with stars or cards to know that a V-10 in a model that shares both its engine and chassis with the Lamborghini Huracán—which has officially announced its retirement—is unlikely to have a future past 2024.

We could curl up and cry about it, and indeed, some of us have, but it seemed the best way to celebrate the R8’s cannonade of combustion is to spend some time in one.

Jess Walker|Car and Driver

Now, Car and Driver as a team has been in just about every R8, from the Le Mans prototype, before the road-legal sports car existed, back when the racer was only a three-time winner (it would go on to gather two more) to the early models of the first generation production car. Over more than a decade of R8-ing, there have been some reoccurring thoughts. From the get-go, the R8 struck us as more functional than your run-of-the-mill mid-engine machine. Csaba Csere described a 2008 V-8 model as “roomy,” “racy,” and “useful.” Ten years and a generation later, Eric Tingwall pronounced the 2017 V-10 Plus “graceful and sophisticated … compliant and comfortable.”

When I asked our current team for Audi memories, testing director Dave VanderWerp mentioned it was the first car he ever set a sub-three-minute lap time in at our annual Lightning Lap testing, and highlighted the R8’s dual nature. His other R8 recollection was of a road trip through Napa with his wife. When asked which of those was the bigger thrill, he wisely didn’t answer.

Road test editor, Becca Hackett, was working in automotive fleet management when the first R8s came to the States and had the unenviable job of keeping her foot off the floor. “The cars would often arrive straight from the port so we would have to unwrap them and put the first 500 break-in miles on them. I spent a couple of weeks driving multiple R8s before the automotive journalists even laid eyes on them.”

Associate news editor Caleb Miller is going to be jealous reading this. As a relative newbie in the C/D office, he has yet to get behind the wheel of an R8, but he’s loved them ever since he saw Iron Man as a kid. “I was obsessed with Iron Man, and by association, the R8 became one of my favorite supercars. It looked so low and sleek, and I think the association with the badass, tech-king Tony Stark made it seem even more futuristic. But it also felt semi-attainable, in that I would see one every so often.”

We’re going to ignore that part about Miller seeing Iron Man in 2008 as a kid because it brings up an uncomfortable awareness of the passage of time. Point is, the R8 has been an important part of Car and Driver’s collective consciousness, so as we prepare for what may be our last year of R8 drives, we want to do each one justice.

I’m not sure starting my time in a Suzuka Gray 2022 R8 Performance RWD Spyder by driving it to get a haircut during Friday afternoon rush hour was exactly doing justice to its 562-hp 5.2-liter V-10. However, the fact that the R8 can chug along the freeway as smoothly as a Toyota Corolla, quietly mumbling to itself where many of its peers would be straining at the reins and spitting fire with every downshift, supports all the claims of sensible-supercardom. “Don’t bother blow-drying,” I told my stylist, gesturing out the window. “Spyder.” It works to dry hair too. Previous reviews didn’t mention that.

Jess Walker|Car and Driver

The next day was better. It started on Little Tujunga, a road too small for the R8 to stretch its legs, but one with plenty of canyon walls to bounce the bass drum of the exhaust out over California’s San Fernando Valley. The return was broader and faster, with tight turns to get just a touch of wiggle—the blessings of rear-wheel-drive—and big sweepers to stick and stay in it. The R8 doesn’t terrify with initial acceleration like a McLaren, and it isn’t small and saucy like a Lotus, it pulls forward with the big-engine confidence of a draft horse. It’s wide, solid, and slow to startle.

Later, on the freeway, I thought about how different the R8 is from its Lamborghini sibling. Changing lanes in a Huracán is an exercise in faith. There are side mirrors, but they tend to vibrate so vigorously that one can’t tell if the reflection is an SUV or a distant mountain skipping like a biblical ram. It’s up to the gods to clear the way. The Audi mirrors reflect a little chunk of rear hip and two lanes on either side, all steady and ready for your blinker. Parking is easy, too, which is surprising because the R8 doesn’t have a nose-lift or a big center screen to show multiple camera angles. Then again, it also doesn’t have a jutting front spoiler or a giant rear wing.

Jess Walker|Car and Driver

Jess Walker|Car and Driver

My last day in the R8 started at a Formula 1 viewing party, where the Audi looked right at home door-handle-to-door-handle with Ferraris, Lambos, and Porsches. Our car carried a heavy price tag for an R8: $189,690, larded with a premium stereo, sport exhaust, and diamond-stitched leather. Even so, it’s a bargain compared to its Ferrari 488 neighbor, or even its Huracán cousin. Its deep red interior got approving nods, and it was easy to find a willing passenger for the post-race Malibu cruise. With the top down and the heat up—is there any better combination than a convertible with heated seats on a cool morning?—we set the modes to their loudest and stiffest and blurred the hillsides all the way to the ocean.

The R8 is still a sports car, the seating position is low, and getting in and out is more of a heave and a tumble than a red-carpet arrival, but the seats are soft and adjustable while still looking sporty. It’s a roomy car, with space for larger pilots and passengers but with no pillow requirement for those of us less blessed with height. The Spyder lacks some of the storage capacity of the coupe, but a savvy packer could get a weekend’s worth of junk in the frunk, and road trip snacks in the hidden back console. Truly, what more do you need? Maybe a few more years of opportunity to buy a new one.

Jess Walker|Car and Driver

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