How much is half a second and 105 horsepower worth to you? You'll want to ponder that question if you're in the enviable position of having to decide between the V-8-propelled version of Audi's R8 two-seat, mid-engine exotic or the newly introduced V-10 edition. When the cars are similarly configured, the ten's two additional cylinders command a premium of nearly $10K apiece.
Are they worth it?
It's at this point our test drivers get all philosophical and existential. Is a 2001 Beringer Private Reserve a "better" Cabernet than a 2002 Quintessa? Do we prefer Angelina Jolie to Jennifer Connelly? "GoodFellas" or "The Sopranos"? It's debates such as these that keep the MT water cooler boiling.
The "regular" R8, understand, is already one of our very favorite automobiles. It won our 2008 "Best Handling Car" competition, and in 2009 finished second (to the Porsche Cayman S) in our follow-up "Best Driver's Car" extravaganza. Few vehicles on earth so brilliantly combine such sweet steering, predictable and powerful chassis dynamics, exhilarating straight-line thrust, and art museum-worthy looks (inside and out). The R8 is a machine that does everything to such a degree of exceptionalness -- it'll happily lollygag around town too -- that almost every single one of us has it on our list of "Cars I'm Going To Buy When My Stock in videosforyourpet.com Goes Nuclear."
So it's settled then -- the V-8 R8 is plenty good enough already, right? Ah, but wait until your right foot gets a taste of the V-10's kick. With an extra liter of displacement and those two additional cylinders, the so-called "5.2 FSI quattro" romps with 525 horses at 8000 rpm -- and allows you to spin its crank to an insane 8700 rpm. Weight climbs by 143 pounds, yet acceleration to 60 mph (with the standard six-speed manual) drops a full half second, to just 3.4 seconds, and quarter-mile performance improves even more, to just 11.7 seconds at 120.7 mph (versus 12.5 seconds at 111.9 mph for the V-8). This isn't just paper prowess; it's added speed you can feel in every gear. Says our Ron Kiino: "Seems the jump from R8 V-8 to V-10 is akin to the leap from Corvette Z06 to ZR1. Sure, 99.9 percent of us will likely never push an R8 V-8 or Z06 to the limit -- even at a racetrack -- and God knows both are plenty fast and amazing, but the R8 V-10 and ZR1 are simply that much more incredible, and we want them because of it."
