By Glenn McClanan
I'll admit it. When planning my recent trip to the Western Balkans, I had grand visions of powering down the twisty roads of the Dalmatian Coast in Croatia in the Audi R8 that I was sure to get by selecting "Compact" on the Thrifty.com website.
And even when I came face to face with the stone-cold reality of the 2008 Chevrolet Spark that Thrifty Zagreb actually rented to me, my brain wouldn't quite let go of that dream. I asked the guy at the Thrifty desk about traffic speed cameras (which seem to be almost everywhere in Europe now), and sarcastic Mr. Thrifty proceeded to mutter something like "don't worry about that because that car could never reach the speed limit anyway."
"Excuse me? What was that?"
But he didn't need to elaborate. Minutes later, I was speeding, or wishing I was speeding, down the highways of Croatia (which, by the way, put the decrepit I-5 in California to shame). Even in the world of tin cans, this tin can feels underpowered. I could in fact get up to the 130 km/h (80 mph) speed limit if I held it at full throttle for roughly a day. But based on the tortured sounds coming from the 51 hp 0.8L, I realized how much the Spark preferred an amble to a sprint, so I generally kept it 10-20 km/h under the speed limit.
To be clear, I didn't choose the Spark specifically. That's the kind of car you get when you choose the cheapest option on the cheapest car rental website. Mr. Thrifty sheepishly admitted that it was actually a rebadged Daewoo Matiz, which is known for its tall roof relative to its size. Its size is somewhere between a Hotwheel and a Honda Fit.
Continue reading Sparky and Me: 2008 Chevrolet Spark Lights Up the Balkans.
Categories: Chevrolet,Road Trips
The trip is long over with now and the R8 V10 is now back in the hands of Audi. Other than a few pieces of rabbit carcass jammed into the undercarriage and a couple Heath bar wrappers that went MIA, the R8 was returned largely unscathed.
Fuel mileage probably doesn't matter to those who can afford a $150,000 car, but the big V10 averaged 15.7 miles per gallon over the course of the trip. The longest run on a single tank was a measly 272 miles, so clearly this R8 is made for primping in gas stations above all else.
That's fine though, because as Dan mentioned earlier, the R8 is the everyman's exotic. People don't assume you're an arrogant a-hole when you're standing next to it, they just think you like cool cars.
And like it we did. The R8 doesn't grow tiring as you rack up the miles like some exotics. Instead, it feels more and more like a normal car. Comfortable seats, good visibility, a compliant ride, it's almost too easy. Through three-and-a-half days of driving, we never attempted to kill one another although one of my ill-timed blips of the throttle did send Dan's Jarritos lime soda pouring onto his shirt, and pants, and seat. He was not amused.
For a look at our entire route, click the jump for a map.
Audi R8 V10 Road Trip
Continue reading Audi R8 V10 Road Trip: Wrap Up.
Categories: Audi,Coupes,Luxury Cars,Road Trips,Sports Cars
There is a button on the R8's console with a picture of a shock absorber on it. Press it and the R8's magnetically-adjustable dampers go into sport mode. After thousands of miles behind the wheel, we have found little use for it.
We have no doubt that it actually does something, but given the R8's capabilities in "normal" mode, there doesn't seem like much of a need for more aggressive damper settings. The few times we tried it, the R8 just felt more nervous and less comfortable. Small bumps felt like large ones and the few degrees of body roll that exist became less obvious.
But like all adjustable systems, there isn't a need for them if the original suspension tune feels right to begin with. Sure, manual adjustment can push the parameters more aggressively in one direction or another, but it hardly seems worth the effort. Just get it right the first time and no one will wish for more.
Categories: Audi,Coupes,Luxury Cars,Road Trips,Sports Cars
Herewith, some of our favorite photos from our four-day, 2,000-mile journey of discovery (and In-N-Out Burger burgers). Enjoy.
Categories: Audi,Coupes,Luxury Cars,Road Trips,Sports Cars
After bombing out of Sacramento up through the Sierra Nevada on easily the finest roads of the trip so far, we set our sights on the Nevada desert and that well-spring of modern American folklore and locus of paranoia, Area 51.
Did we see alien life forms? And how! We arrived at Nevada state route 375 at nightfall. Route 375 was christened the Extraterrestrial Highway back in 1996 in a ceremony attended by the stars of the movie Independence Day, including Jeff Goldblum but not Will Smith.
Our first sighting came about 30 miles outside of Rachel, Nev., the only human habitation on the forsaken stretch of dust.
Continue reading after the jump.
Continue reading Audi R8 V10 Road Trip: Splitting Hares on the E.T. Highway .
Categories: Audi,Coupes,Luxury Cars,Road Trips,Sports Cars
The lonely desert roads of Nevada can be a strange place. There are desolate towns that have no obvious reasons to exist, and then there's the occasional Suzuki pirate ship.
At first we thought that the galleon motif was part of an elaborate camouflage scheme meant to hide Suzuki's newest medium-duty truck. Then we realized that no one would care what it looked like anyway.
After closer inspection of the "Space Wench" on the road, we determined that it was clearly a vehicle prop headed for the annual circus that is Burning Man. Only there would such a contraption seem perfectly at home.
And the half disassembled plane (?) on the trailer? Well, we never did figure out what that was, any ideas?
Categories: Audi,Coupes,Luxury Cars,Road Trips,Sports Cars
Just doing our part to keep California's German tourists happy. Nice sock/shoe combo, dude.
Categories: Audi,Coupes,Luxury Cars,Road Trips,Sports Cars
All that coastal driving was nice, but we were starting to feel like a couple of trust fund babies with nothing better to do. Why not expose the R8 V10 to the kind of salt-of-the-earth folks who might appreciate its awesome power and marvel at its ridiculous price?
And with that, we detoured to Sacramento.
There we were sure to find a sizable chunk of middle America along with hot weather and the occasional farm. Sactown, as the locals so lovingly refer to it, is also home to Sacramento Raceway Park, a dusty dragstrip on the edge of town that will gladly let you run the quarter mile for a small fee. How could we pass that up?
Continue reading Audi R8 V10 Road Trip: Running the Quarter Mile With Sacramento's Finest.
Categories: Audi,Coupes,Luxury Cars,Road Trips,Sports Cars
In the minds of most folks that have driven the R8, it seems, the mid-engine Audi is successor to the Acura NSX for the Everyday Supercar crown. We won't argue with that assessment.
We will note two things first though. One, the R8 super-low nose hanging way out in front of the front wheels means that unless you are uncommonly careful, everyday driveway aprons leave everyday scratches on the underside of the Audi's nose. And, two, even Lamborghinis and Ferraris don't just go down the street shedding parts and lighting themselves on fire anymore. At least not in our experience.
Still, with two tall dude, two medium-to-large-size duffel bags, two laptops, a tripod and a couple of cameras, the R8 was a perfectly adequate weekend-trip car for two. You might scoff at the idea of only fitting two soft-sided bags into the R8's (front) luggage compartment, but you couldn't do half as much in a Pontiac Solstice. Keep in mind, we had only each other to impress, so we employed to cram-and-wrinkle method of packing. The two duffels and the tripod went into the deep well under the hood and our computer bags fit nicely on the shelf behind the seats. One issue: The heat generated in the nose of the R8 (even at quite cool ambient temperatures along the coast) was enough to melt some of my toiletries. And they are never the same after that.
Of particular use was the candy-bar dispenser pictured above. Once melted and mashed, we could cram a couple of Heath bars, a Kit Kat and a couple of those horrid Power Bar things. There are even little map pockets in the doors that are large enough for maps, a deep glove box and a little covered compartment on the center console. Nice.
Categories: Audi,Road Trips,Sports Cars
A professional driver on a closed course, etc. Do not try this at home.
Categories: Audi,Road Trips,Sports Cars
It shouldn't really come as too much of a surprise that we'd see this in the rear-view mirror at some point on this trip. The real surprise is that it didn't happen until the second day. We were heading East on highway 299 away from the coast.
It's a pleasant wooded drive with big smooth sweepers that, in the R8 V10, can easily be negotiated at speeds well above our comfort level (and nearly three times the speed limit).
We were doing a blameless 5 mph over the limit when we arrived at the top of a crest to see this gentleman's car on the side of the road. Soon enough, the lights go on and we ease into a turnout.
He didn't seem to care one whit about the car. "Oooh, that's not good," we thought. That was the only card we had to play. But it turns out that doing only 5 mph over the speed limit, even with a construction zone a few miles up ahead, is not really enough to justify a speeding ticket. Luckily, our man in uniform agreed, eventually.
Also, lucky for us, was that he wasn't stationed a few miles earlier on that road.
Categories: Audi,Road Trips,Sports Cars
If there is one issue with the Audi R8 V10 that might cause some head scratching among potential buyers, it's the lack of differentiation between the $150,000 V10 model and the standard V8 version. We reckon that people who buy R8s choose to fly a little bit under the radar compared to their Ferrari-owning friends, but that doesn't mean they don't want the world to know they're packing 525-horsepower out back.
To see the differences between the V8 and V10 cars you have to look quite closely, that is if you're not standing off to one side in view of the modest "V10" badge on the front quarter panel. The new wheel design is another obvious tip off provided you're familiar with the standard design. Click through for a full run down on the V10s other less obvious upgrades.
Continue reading Audi R8 V10 Road Trip: Extra $30K Gets You V10 Engine, Some Other Stuff.
Categories: Audi,Coupes,Luxury Cars,Road Trips,Sports Cars
Thank god for the R8's brilliant LED headlights. Without them, you wouldn't have such a clear look at what happens when an impatient driver, fog and a largely immovable embankment come together to produce this minor catastrophe.
According to the couple that arrived on the scene first, the truck passed them at a high rate of speed just a few minutes earlier. "I'm not surprised this happened the way that moron was driving," said the woman in the least compassionate way possible.
Bear in mind, the truck was originally headed in the other direction, so it managed to pirouette off the hillside before landing in this position. No one was hurt we were told.
As you can see, the R8's headlights throw down a bright, wide swath of light that the local sheriff surely would have appreciated had we stuck around for the investigation. Instead, we sneaked by the fallen Toyota and continued through the thick fog at a speed that would assure we wouldn't meet the same fate.
Our apologies for the blurry photos. Dan insisted that we hurry by and not take too many photos to avoid looking like soulless snobs relishing in the misfortune of others.
Categories: Audi,Coupes,Luxury Cars,Road Trips,Sports Cars
Please, do us a favor and back away from the keyboard. We are well aware of the fact that the Cadillac Escalade Platinum was the first vehicle in the U.S to offer both high- and low-beam LED headlights. In fact, we noted Cadillac's LED setup in this very blog at one point.
But as it says in the headline, the Audi R8 5.2 is the first vehicle in the U.S. to come with LED headlights as standard equipment. And they work quite well, especially when you're moving at a brisk pace under the pitch black skies of the northern California coast.
The spread of light is nearly perfect. There are no dead spots and it extends to the sides just enough to light up the occasional squirrel looking to tempt fate and try a crossing. If anything, we wouldn't mind a slightly longer throw, sort of a "super bright" feature for times when the road opens up and you're pretty sure no one is anywhere in sight. Maybe LED technology will allow this. Or maybe we'll just slow down.
And by the way, the engine compartment also gets its own pair of LED lights. Not a bad way to show off the rather impressive looking V10 under the rear glass eh?
Categories: Audi,Coupes,Luxury Cars,Road Trips,Sports Cars
You know what the world needs? We mean, beside all that good stuff like universal joy and free toffee.
The world needs more knurling. That's right, knurling. The Audi R8 V10's barrel-shaped metal shift knob has two wide stripes of knurling - the diagonal, criss-cross cuts that give the surface of the knob the appearance of row upon row of tidy little pyramids. One of us likes to think of this as how ancient Egyptian neighborhoods would look like if they were around for modern subdivision sprawl.
Anyway, it feels so good under the touch pads of our fingers and thumbs that we occasionally just let those on our right hand trace back and forth over the surface while our left hand takes up semi-permanent residence at 12:00 on the steering wheel. Yes, we know that the V8-powered R8 uses the same fantastic knob, but we don't believe it has gotten its due respect yet. And, if you must know, the shift knob in the V10 car has a red ring around the top. We also have a tendency to caress the smooth black Alcantara headliner too, but that's another story.
You know what's better than a shift knob that feels like really high-quality goodness?
Follow the jump for the answer and a video illustration.
Continue reading 2010 Audi R8 V10 Road Trip: Click And Clack Go Knurling.
Categories: Audi,Road Trips,Sports Cars
