Audi R8 Spyder 2016 Review

Audi R8 Spyder             
First Drive
Barcelona, Spain

If this is Audi Sport’s last naturally aspirated V10 before turbochargers take over, it’s a fitting last hurrah. It’s a brilliant-sounding, high-revving drama of a thing that makes fast driving easy. Then there’s a user-friendly chassis, a neat interior and the entertainment value of its roof system.

A brilliant car, the R8 Spyder, and perhaps the very last of its kind. Sadly, the epically glorious wail and bellow of its exhaust, the deep hissing of its induction roar and the intuitively quick throttle response are all relics of an age we will soon farewell.

It’s a car that always makes you feel like you’re the playing the lead role in a wondrously intimate theatre piece, even when you go to the shops (to buy very small things).

Coming from his role as the head of Lamborghini, New Audi Sport (yes, quattro GmbH has been scrubbed from Audi’s future) boss Stephan Winkelmann knows a bit about delivering theatre. And this is a cracker.

If it’s sheer speed you want, the R8 Spyder won’t let you down. At 3.6 seconds, it’s just a tenth of a second shy of the R8 coupe to 100km/h, it takes just 11.8 seconds to blister from zero to 200km/h and its 318km/h top end is only 5km/h slower than the slipperier hardtop.

There are faster cars, but all of them have turbochargers that force feed them to deliver upside-down boot heels for torque curves and exhaust tones so muffled that even astonishing acoustic contrivances only partly redeem them.

Extra torque means the Porsche 911 Turbo is half a second quicker to 100km/h, even though it has roughly the same power (and it’s lighter), but what’s that really for?

So far, that could be an intro for the R8 coupe — but things usually get sloppier with a convertible. When a supercar uses every last scrap of its metal to keep the chassis strong in the face of brutal twisting forces, it’s not hard to imagine that the removal of a big chunk of structure is going to make the handling worse.

With this in mind, Audi has heavily reinforced the convertible with extra thickness for the side sills and the A-pillars that hold the windscreen in place. The body-in-white (the core body before bolt-on bits and pieces arrive on the production line) is only 8kg heavier than the coupes, even with all of this scaffolding.

And then the roof system turns up, all theatre, with a carbon-composite lid and good looks. The weight bumps out to 1720kg (up 125kg on the Coupe) and that’s starting to sound significant for an entirely selfish two-seater with 112 litres of luggage capacity. It’s even worse if you use the EU standard for such things, which labels its kerb weight as 1795kg (and even that’s 20kg down on the old car).

The central key to the Spyder’s chassis rigidity is the carbon-composite central tunnel shared with the Coupe and the Lamborghini Huracan, though it’s modified to swallow the roof system behind it. From there, the R8’s aluminium spaceframe spreads forwards and backwards to create the car.

It’s 50 percent more resistant to twisting than its predecessor and while that means it should be much better at keeping all its road-gripping bits working in the places they were designed for, it’s still 40 percent less rigid than the Coupe.

Given the slightly softer handling focus of the Spyder, Audi doesn’t believe that’s going to matter too much. They sure don’t think it’s a negative.

It must be recognised that not only does the complete soft-top system weigh 44kg, it’s positioned relatively high, which isn’t exactly what the track-day software tells you is ideal.

Fortunately, that enormous carbon-composite engine cover – almost certainly the single biggest such thing in production today – hides a mighty lump.

The V10 uses forty valves, both direct and indirect fuel injection systems, a 12.5:1 compression ratio, plus variable valve timing and lift that enables it to spin hard and high. Its enthusiasm for revs is particularly odd for a powerplant in which the 84.5mm bore size is significantly smaller than the 92.8mm stroke.

It adds 10kW to the old engine to peak at 397kW at 7800rpm – but there’s clearly more to come from next year’s R8 Plus Spyder, because the Coupe version of that has 449kW.

There’s torque, too, but you’ll have to work to climb the peak. It’s not one of those modern turbo things that punches from 1500rpm. The all-alloy V10 climbs and climbs up the tacho until, at last, at 6500rpm, it’s got all 540 Isaacs twisting together.

It’s actually more economical than it was, thanks to cylinder deactivation that turns the V10 into a five-cylinder engine when it’s cruising and even unhooking the transmission to let it “coast”. And it has start-stop technology just like those cars for poorer people.

But it’s a beautiful thing. I don’t mean physically, to look at, because you can’t. A lot of roof shenanigans lay between you and it, whether the soft top is up, down or in between.
It’s a beautiful thing because of what it does, how it feels and how it sounds. It’s the star of the show, even more than the R8 Coupe or the R8 Plus Coupe.

That’s because with the roof down the R8 Spyder takes the Coupe’s raucous theatrics and turns them into a full immersion adventure in vocal gymnastics, from deep burbling at idle to a mid-range so thick and sweet and darkly threatening that it could be a river of molasses were it not for the myriad of timbre changes.

Then it crosses a curiously calm patch (which, in isolation, would feel like double the decibels of a 911 Turbo) after about 6000rpm that lasts a few hundred revs and seems almost like it’s gathering itself, coiling up to explode towards the 7800rpm power peak. And explode it does, gaining a frenetic edge and a higher pitch as it smashes into its redline, over and over again.

It sounds so seamlessly rich because the R8 doesn’t rely on just one sound wave. It uses two, one so low it sounds sub-bass and the other one-and-a-third octaves higher up.
Fiddle with the throttle mid-corner, as it begs you to do, and the Spyder adds the chuffing of air being rammed into the fires, then pops and gurgles with each downshift.

And all of that that is before it finds a cliff face to echo off – or, even better, a tunnel. We found both in the Montserrat, enriching the whole experience and sending a flat-plane crank bellow billowing down the valley. Or so the policemen told us, presumably out of curiosity.

It’s loud in the normal mode on full throttle and, if you push the Exhaust Note Maximiser™ button (Audi doesn’t call it that, but should) on the steering wheel, the car’s passing is enough to send doddery old ducks scurrying to write letters to the editor.

And that is just the noise. It’s so overwhelmingly rich and absorbing that you sometimes overlook just how straight-up fast the R8 Spyder actually is. That’s partly because it doesn’t have a turbo supercar’s wait-wait-wallop and partly because it’s so wonderfully linear in its delivery that piling on speed is a matter of honing your finesse. The car seems to make that easy to do.

It’s abetted by a phenomenally good seven-speed dual-clutch transmission that shifts naturally and fast and an all-wheel drive setup that hurls drive seamlessly around the car to generate speed and assurance at every turn.

With outstanding braking power from its eight-piston front anchors and quick response from its magnetic-fluid dampers, its handling delicately remains between tractable and frisky. It never scribbles outside those two lines, no matter how much mid-corner speed you pile into it. Torsional forces be damned, it attacks lumpy and bumpy bends with only an occasional mirror shimmy, with the A-pillars standing there like two modern versions of the Colossus of Rhodes.

The only shortcoming to speak of is its optional adaptive steering which, despite so many other advances and out-there-ness in the car, can’t quite bring itself to leave Audi’s lifetime habits behind. It doesn’t matter which handling mode the car is in, it just doesn’t self-centre with any enthusiasm and you always find yourself aching for it to come and join the rest of the engineering. Forget it, save some dinars and use the far-better base system. Truth be known, same goes for the magnetic damping. The stock system is so good that it’s not necessary unless you live on a seriously lumpy bit of strada.

Leave the mountains behind, calm it all down and the R8 Spyder still shines. It cruises with surprising comfort and nonchalance (though you’ll need to switch out of the Exhaust Note Maximiser™ because it drones on a bit at a constant throttle) and local highway conditions won’t find the point where the wind noise becomes ill mannered.

While the roof-raising theatrics are done in 20 seconds, the rear glass is a flutter by comparison. With the side windows up, it helps keep the air inside the open cabin calm enough to hold conversations comfortably.

The interior layout is almost identical to the Coupe’s (save for the buttons for the roof and rear-glass systems), but the roof mechanism pushes the bulkhead forward to the point where tall people won’t be able to recline their seats back as far as they can in the hard-top. More tellingly, it has also eaten the space the Coupe has behind the seats for sports bags and other stuff, so you have to rely more on the nose’s tiny luggage area.

But when all is said and done, the Audi R8 Spyder is a brilliant car, brilliantly executed and more fun than a YouTube of startled kittens.

2017 Audi R8 Spyder pricing and specifications:
Price: TBA
Engine: 5.2-litre, 40-valve V10, naturally aspirated, petrol
Output: 397kW/540Nm
Transmission: seven-speed dual clutch 
Fuel: 11.7 litres/100km
CO2: 277 grams/km 
Safety Rating: TBA
0-100km/h: 3.6 seconds
Top speed: 318km/h (limited)