[Review] 2014 Audi R8 V10: A Dream that Comes After the Corvette

Have you ever considered what you would drive if you won the lottery, or if uncle Warren Buffett left you some of his dough? I know you have. A Corvette is a dream car, but it’s not the only dream car out there.

My independent research on this forum has proven that dreams do not end at the Corvette — many owners of America’s sports car have other fine automobiles in their stables. The Corvette is a lot of car, but supercars like the Lamborghini Aventador are undeniably “more car”. Corvette lovers are car lovers, therefore, exotic machines like the Bugatti Veyron and the Pagani Zonda offer more to love.

So after you’ve acquired your Corvette, what car sits at the next goal post? What car do you pick when you go from sports car to supercar (without going nuts and heading straight for the McLaren P1)? I think the next logical choice for Corvette owners is the Audi R8 V10.

Why not a Nissan GT-R? It offers supercar performance, but not the supercar experience. It’s more like a “sports car on steroids” experience, but you’re not treated like a celebrity when you drive one of those.

To the detractors, I hear you crying, “What about the Z06, you fool? That’s an effing supercar, you idiot.” Indeed, the Z06 is really THE next logical step after the Stingray, but this article exists to talk about what you would get after you’ve gone as far as you could go with the Corvette.

I can still hear you crying, “Dude, I don’t give a rat’s ass about any other car. If I had a C7 Z06, that would be all I needed. Case closed.” I see your point, but that doesn’t mean the new Z06 will make all other supercars irrelevant.

I have heard of people who have owned Lamborghinis and Ferraris before they have owned Corvettes, and even with their heavy exposure to exotic supercars, their ‘Vettes hold special places in their hearts. I believe, however, that if you were to ask some playboy who owns a Corvette and 19 exotic cars to give up his 19 other ultra-performance vehicles, he’d probably say “no”.

At the end of the day, a Corvette — even a Z06 — is going to offer a wonderful, life-altering Corvette experience, and an Audi R8 is going to offer a wonderful, life-altering Audi R8 experience. Subtract one of those great experiences, and you only have half of the greatness. Also, both vehicles offer different qualities for you to gush over; therefore, I urge you … especially if you are of the mind that a C7 Z06 is the only supercar you’ll ever need, drop your prejudice and do whatever you can to experience a super-exotic car like an Audi R8 V10. You will thank me.

With the detractors addressed, let’s talk about the Audi.

I got to take this $196,795 Audi R8 V10 plus Coupe quattro S tronic home only two days after I went skydiving. I expected my skydiving experience to provide me with a level of exhilaration that would bring on a spiritual emergence. It didn’t. It was underwhelming, in fact. Fifteen seconds into my freefall, and after a couple of forced and disingenuous varieties of “whoo”, I was thinking to myself that I would prefer being on the ground as opposed to flying through the air at 120 mph.

Two days later I’m putting some gas into the R8, and on my Instagram, I declare, “The $20 I am spending on buying this girl a drink will be the best 20 bucks I’ve ever spent.”

It was.

In fact, it made up for my dull encounter with falling through the sky. Speaking of dull, at this point I could write about the R8’s practicality and well-mannered tendencies when it’s not in Sport mode, but that’s already been written about at length by all the major publications, thus the dullness that would result if I were to write about it here. Let’s get to the exhilaration, then.

The exhilaration begins with launch control. You haven’t shaken the hand of an all-wheel-drive supercar, until you have experienced launch control. Imagine the violence you would feel if you stuck your arm into a bunch of spinning machinery powered by a 550-horsepower V10. Convert that violence into forward movement, and you may begin to see what I mean. Convert that violent forward movement into numbers, and you get 3.3 seconds to 60 mph, and a mid-to-low 11-second ET in the quarter mile.

Get to the first corner, and the exhilaration continues. If you thought you had a handle on the laws of physics, drive an R8, and then think again. Taking turns at what would be death-defying speeds in a regular car, is a Sunday drive in an R8. Audi’s quattro permanent all-wheel-drive system makes the most out of the 235mm and 295mm tires at the front and the back, respectively. If cars magnify the abilities of humans, the R8’s relentless grip magnifies the abilities of general ableness.

All that power and grip motivated by a screaming V10 paired to quattro all-wheel drive, which is all packaged into a wonderfully exotic aluminum space frame means a lot of laughs; so many that my diaphragm became tired from an amount of belly laughter only Santa Claus could handle.

This is a belly laughter overdose every person on the planet should experience, and the Audi R8 V10 plus is a great permission slip for that laughter overload. Would this laughter overload be experienced in a new Corvette Z06? Yes. I am certain of it. It’s likely the new Z06 will offer even more laughter because the super ‘Vette has 100 more horsepower than the R8 V10 plus, but will the C7 Z06 render all other supercars irrelevant? No.

Is bison tartare irrelevant because of the existence of tartare de filet de boeuf? I think not.

Chime in with your thoughts on the forum. >>

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