2008 Audi R8: Idiot Proof Launch Control

You're not in the majority as far as knowing what your car is telling you. I see to many idiots screwing up their clutches, not to mention other vital parts. Although a manual transmission does force you to be a little more connected to your vehicle, it does not make you a better or more responsible driver.

My god these two cars are ridiculous (GT-R and R8). Their sole purpose, the whole reason they exist and cost $80K to $120K, is to go super-duper fast off the line. And yet...it appears that they can't even reliably do THAT!

Maybe the GT-R's problem isn't that it has launch control. The problem is that it assumes owners are smart enough to not use it too often. With the R8, Audi assumed the opposite.

What? You do realise that the GT-R's problem is that the owners aren't smart enough to not use it too often, that's why it's been completely removed! Assumptions will lead you into the place Nissan is in now with the bad press from the failing transmissions.

"The problem is that it assumes its owners are smart..."

What? They ARE smart- they've trained for hours driving a GT-R on their Playstation.

Launching AWD cars is terrible... you can damage a whole lot more than simply the clutch. Audi has to do it or else it would only run 13 second 1/4 mile time. The GTR has to do it or it won't be fast enough to gain all the media hype as "the best car evAR!" Instead of trying to prove something, they need to just make a good car. You may be fast, but what good is that if you can't cross the finish line?

coletrickle:

Are you f'ing serious? If you think that the "sole purpose" or "whole reason they exist" for either the GT-R or the R8 is straight-line, launch from 0 acceleration - you know absolutely nothing about cars.

Please find me one, just one, person who will argue that the primary purpose of any exotic sports car is drag racing.

I could go on, but I'm too dumbfounded that you would even attempt to argue that the purpose of a sports car is to perform repeated launches from a standstill. Launch control is useless in ALL real world situations that cars like these excel in.

Please, I beg of you, back away from your keyboard before you post anything else that will make us all dumber for having read it.

On second thought, coletrickle, I'll make it even simpler for you: point out a single race car with a transmission intended to survive a large amount of hard launches from a standstill.

Go ahead, I'll wait...

The whole reason these cars were engineered and hyped and fed to the American consumer at a cost of $80K to $120K is because they register ridiculously fast "track times" and "launch times" and "1/4 mile times" etc.

99.9999% of consumers, (even those that can afford to spend $100,000 on a rapidly depreciating asset like an automobile), won't ever take these cars on a track.

They will be duped into buying it because it's the latest fad and on the cover of car magazines. Then they'll watch it spend most of it's time in and out of the repair shop. They'll launch it a few times and go "really, really fast for 12.2 seconds".

But ultimately they'll realize the car is impracticle and has no soul because it's all electronics. They'll suffer buyer's remorse and sell it with 13,000 miles on it for 46% of what they paid.

+1 zcalvert

I hear the same thing about Evo's and STi's getting torn up in the gravel even though they are "rally cars"

There is a reason dragsters get torn down and rebuilt between runs, and that rally cars have repair time after every special stage. Tons of examples...24 les mans...baja...

I can't help but wonder how long these transmissions will last even if you do take care of them. It's obvious they can't stand up to abuse but if abuse kills them in a few weeks or months, will normal spirted driving toast them in a couple years?

If you have to drive like an old lady to get them to last the life of the car, then what's the point?

Time to go back to a real manual.

I'm a fan of imports but I will be the first to admit that there is a serious bias against domestics when it comes to pointing out flaws. If the R8 or GTR were a Corvette Zo6 or ZR1 and the Vette had an overheated clutch after ONE launch everyone would say what a piece of crap it was. I hope and pray IL gets a ZR1 to for the long term test to see how well it compares to the other exotics. And if you build a high performance car you should expect it to be driven hard, all the time. IL is considering getting a new Ram or F150 for the longterm fleet. If they blow a transmission or have suspension damage after towing a 7,000lb trailer make sure to say that Ford and Chrysler didn't expect people to actually use it for heavy duty use on a regular basis and it wasn't designed for that.

Great post Ed, Nissan should have taken the same approach that Audi did...I'm sure they will further down the line.

Also, people who have no understanding of mechanics
should refrain from commenting.

This sounds like Car and Driver's attempt a few years ago to overdrive and/or hop up a Mitsubishi EVO to the point where that car regularly fried parts of its drive train every time it went out on the road.

Engineers design components to have specific life cycles and load factors so they stay within safe, elastic deformation limits. Go beyond them, and you'll permanently deform them, possibly without knowing, which will lead to their eventually breaking.

If the point of Edmunds testing is to show that these supercars can die from over-enthusiastic driving, that should let future drivers know what they are getting themselves into if they do the same.

you guys are all missing the real question here. Do either of these cars count down the miles left on a tank of gas all the way to 0 or do they just say "low fuel"?

We've had our DSG equipped car for about two years. Wife still likes it. I like that my wife is happy. Otherwise, I've grown to dislike it as much as a generic auto. And there's something decidedly flimsy about the whole thing.

Audi goes down to 0.

This seems like a smart compromise between keeping LC and the need to avoid paying claims in the case of reckless abuse. Good move, Audi.

+2 zcalvert. coletrickle = fail. first off, consumers are probably going to start realizing that LC is very bad for a transmission and car mags will probably give you 0-60 and 1/4 numbers with LC off and on which should be taken with a grain of salt. I mean, do you really need a warning label telling you that burnouts will wear your tires faster? second, do you drive an aveo or something barebones? all you want is something practical, right?

Courtesy goes a long way. Some enthusiasts feel greater involvement in a car's behavior with a manual transmission. I think I fall in that category - I'm pleased to row the gears, and feel a heightened sense of awareness. But these manu-matics and launch features are interesting, too, and they push performance to higher levels.

Fortunately, there are cars in many categories offering zen mechanical intuitiveness and/or techo wizadry to suit most tastes, and we have more to gain by appreciating other perspectives.