Laser-lit Audi R8 to cost $440K

Three Aussies will get a New Year’s present from Audi, with the brand’s Australian operation confirming the R8 LMX will arrive just after the start of 2015.

An exclusively blue car Audi built to trip the light fantastic, the R8 LMX will cost $440,000 plus on-road costs in Australia, with just three cars headed here as part of the limited-edition model’s 99-car run.

In Germany, the R8 LMX costs €210,000 ($A299,500).

Essentially an R8 V10 Plus that was re-tasked for Audi’s unsuccessful attempt to sneak past the BMW i8 (which is already on sale in Europe, but doesn't reach customers here until next March) and steal automotive laser-light production honours, the R8 LMX gets more power, lighter seats and a full high-speed aero kit.

Powered by a 419kW version of the R8’s 5.2-litre all-alloy direct-injection V10, the LMX gains 15kW on the previous range-topper, the R8 V10 Plus, though the 540Nm torque peak is unchanged.

That’s enough for Audi to claim a 3.4-second sprint to 100km/h for the all-wheel drive LMX and a top speed of 320km/h. It has a seven-speed dual-clutch transmission, rides on 235/35 R19 front tyres and 305/30 R19 rear tyres, and uses carbon-ceramic brakes as standard.

It’s also something of a last hurrah for the R8, with sources saying its replacement will be shown at the Paris motor show in early October before heading to showrooms in 2015.

But while it receives a fixed carbon-fibre spoiler, a deep splitter and carbon-fibre aero 'flics' on the nose, the 1595kg R8 LMX is largely a delivery system for Audi’s new Laser Light headlights.

Each of its headlights uses a combination of LED headlights for low and high beam and, above that, Laser Lights to illuminate a clear road for up to 600 metres.

While drivers can manually choose low or high beam, Audi has tied the Laser Light directly into the car’s camera-based automatic lighting system to prevent the high-intensity beam from dazzling oncoming traffic. It’s also only available at speeds above 60km/h, to prevent it from frying pedestrian eyeballs.

Audi claims it has three times the light range of a standard LED headlight, with four laser diodes (derived from BlueRay DVD technology) shining back into the car onto a fluorescent converter that shines pure white light back out through the front of the headlight.

The diodes produce four blue laser light beams just 450 micrometres wide, and Audi focuses these onto the converter to deliver a colour temperature of 5500 Kelvin.