In fact, the Prancing Horse has in recent years been following McLaren and Mercedes-AMG in bolting turbochargers onto a number of its models, mostly to meet emissions regulations in Europe. Audi too has been working on a turbocharged six-cylinder engine for its iconic R8, so what of the sublime 5.2-litre V10? Well, I suspect that this naturally aspirated motor’s days are numbered, in fact, I think the V10’s days are numbered.
I decided to spend one absolutely thrilling day with the car and create some memories. The ideal place to fully exploit the R8 would be a long quiet road that meanders through the countryside. A road with many high speed corners, long straights, sweeping bends and no cellphone reception. You might be thinking that such a road doesn’t exist, not outside of the Western Cape that is, yet it does. It’s called Slaaihoek and it’s a 35km stretch of beautifully maintained tarmac that ends at the boom gates of a mine located in the Highlands Meander area.
The road is mostly quiet over weekends and offers breath taking scenery. In some parts, it doesn’t even feel as if you are in South Africa. Now that you know what it looks like, let me tell you about the road. For the first twenty kilometres or so, it offers long sweeping bends atop a hill, on both sides are grey rocks akin to an almost British-like landscape. The R8 felt very good here with the engine revving well into the 8 000rpm range.
All of a sudden, while exploiting the screaming V10’s 397kW/540Nm, the road changed. Gone were the long sweeping high speed bends in place of sharp turns, blind rises and hairpins. What made it even more daunting was the fact that there were little to no run-off area or even guard rails.
The R8 I was wresting was fitted with Audi’s carbon ceramic disc brake option, which meant that they can take a lot of punishment and don’t fade, something you need in a car that goes from 0-100km/h in 3.6 seconds. It also features a seven speed S-tronic gearbox which instantly delivers the next gear. It’s also surprisingly nimble through the corners and offers loads of grip thanks to Audi’s quattro all-wheel drive system. One thing I did notice is that the R8 can get a bit tail happy at times when in Dynamic mode, even though it sends its grunt to all four wheels.
It is however the sound that really hits the emotional sweet spot, especially when the roof is down. On down shifts, it pops and bangs out of the large exhausts, which was made even louder when echoed through the trees. When I reached the end of the road, I pulled over, got out, wiped the sweat from my palms and just looked at the car as it sat there ticking away.
It is an incredible machine, a machine that I will dearly miss if Audi were to decide to bid it farewell. Luckily that is not happening anytime soon. There was only one more thing left to do and that was to go all the way back to the start of this incredible road in what is undoubtedly one of my favourite cars of all time.
