997 2s v R8 on top gear

[garyw]

Off Topic a little..

After watching last weeks episode with the Golf it showed how far Porsche had come with the 911 setup..

VW stick a big engine in the rear and it became a monster.. as JC stated, it won't go round bends!!... I half expected him to make a 911 comparison but that would be expecting him to pay the 911 half a compliment...

R8, I like it and it is the new "It car"... [8|] at the moment

garyw

 

[sawood12]

I was in Manchester on Saturday night and spotted an R8 cruising slowly down Oxford Road. It was the first time i've seen one close up in the flesh - i've seen a couple on the opposite carridgeway on the motorway, but this was slowy cruising by. The driver was quite young and had dodgy music blaring out of it with open windows, but once you got past that I must admit the car looked visually stunning. Quite the opposite from the understated looks of a 911. I suppose it depends what you're after - if you are the sort of person who is looking to draw attention to themselves then this car is right up your street. Personally I prefer the more classy and understated apperance of the 911. I'd certainly expect a 911 to be phlem free after parking it up in a public place, not so sure the R8 would escape a coating of phlem or even the odd key scrape down its side.

 

[Sunil]

ORIGINAL: sawood12

I was in Manchester on Saturday night and spotted an R8 cruising slowly down Oxford Road. It was the first time i've seen one close up in the flesh - i've seen a couple on the opposite carridgeway on the motorway, but this was slowy cruising by. The driver was quite young and had dodgy music blaring out of it with open windows, but once you got past that I must admit the car looked visually stunning. Quite the opposite from the understated looks of a 911. I suppose it depends what you're after - if you are the sort of person who is looking to draw attention to themselves then this car is right up your street. Personally I prefer the more classy and understated apperance of the 911. I'd certainly expect a 911 to be phlem free after parking it up in a public place, not so sure the R8 would escape a coating of phlem or even the odd key scrape down its side.

Well said.

However good the car may be, and I'm not denying that it's probably a great car to drive, I don't like bling cars and the R8 smacks of bling. Different coloured side blades? LED running lights? Illuminated engine compartment? No thanks. This is the kind of stuff you'd find in the fantasies of MAX Power aficionados, or at least I imagine so.


Why not have neon running lights under the car as well? They could come on every time the cars stops at traffic lights next to a Porsche, Ferrari, Lamborghini etc ... just so that the driver of the other car knows he's up against the very latest in sports car technology.


When the R8, "˜lights up'* its tyres, screaming away from the traffic lights, the driver of most Porsches, Ferraris, Lamborghinis etc "¦ would be left in its wake. Why? Because the drivers of such cars know that they don't have a chance against a supercar with such high tech lighting and wouldn't even try. Maybe neon lights could be added to the latest list of bling options for the upcoming R10 to give it a performance advantage over its competitors. I'm sure some will wait with baited breath but I'm guessing that there will be very few people from this forum.

What other bling options could be added to the R8? Dry ice being vented from the car so it's "˜smoking'? Who knows! Don't get me wrong, I grew up on Knight Rider as well but I wouldn't have a black Trans-Am with a red LED in the bonnet - would Audi have offfered this as an option if Knight Rider was still current? Again, who knows!

Audi had the chance to do something great here. The engineers did their bit and the designers did theirs. When the marketing people entered the fray they ruined it by making it clear who they think will buy this car with their selection of options. I'm clearly not one of their "˜intended customers' and it's a shame because I love Audis and I love mid-engined cars "" but not this one. If Audi want to be taken seriously with supercars, they should let the performance of the car speak for itself and cut the gimmicks.

There are many factors in determining whether a car can topple the 911. Aesthetics, ergonomics, performance, reliability, longevity, and many more "¦ It's nothing that the R8, being only a few months old, can lay a claim to. Let's see where it is in 10 years or even just 5 years.

*Maybe lighting up the wheels and callipers could be an option? Anyone from MAX Power read this forum?

 

[garyw]

Sunil, good news for you...

Knight Rider is returning []

Strange, the Clarkson loves some cars because of the involving drive, yet others he loves as it distances him from it, easier to drive...??![&:]
He loved the R8 when they took it to IOM in the magazine, so it was a forgone conclusion..., at least it wasn't a serious article..[]

garyw

 

[Sunil]

ORIGINAL: garyw

Sunil, good news for you...

Knight Rider is returning []

Thanks for the info Gary! []

When asked if Hasselhoff would appear in the new version, Mr Silverman laughed and said: "If the market wants it he will be there."

Mr Silverman added that the producers would also be approaching the major car makers to come up with a new version of Kitt, the talking Knight Rider car.

"We get to do product placement in the States so we will be in discussions with a number of the key auto groups over who will deliver a new car," he said.

http://media.guardian.co.uk/broadcast/story/0,,2187184,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=4

Jeez, I was just kidding but it's possible that the new KITT could be a talking R8 with a red LED - Imagine the options list if that happens. []

 

[juliany27]

Saw an R8 on Sunday morning - the driver was showing off in a side street in Marylebone; accelerating hard and stamping on the brakes.

Looks geat from afar, sounds great from nearby - but mucking about / showing off in somewhere like Central London is more than a bit pointless. More police, police cars, cameras etc., not to mention cretins who might do damage out of spite or jealousy.

Still, I suppose that the driver wanted everyone to see that he had a big car - to compensate for something small?

 

[robertc@okw.co.uk]

Seen three R8's so far. In my humble opinion the design is too fussy... especially the front end.

Also there was news in the papers this weekend that Porsche will buy an even greater stake in the VW group. One wonders just how long this 'usurper' (R8) will be allowed to continue... will there be an R8 mark 2? - I doubt it. So with the 911 you get a classic shape with 50 years of on going tradition, and with the R8 perhaps a one hit wonder.

 

[isuk]

Just read through this interesting thread and once again the Audi is stirring passionate debate. I don't doubt for one minute that Audi has created a fantastic car with the R8 but it would be disingenuous to say it's their first shot at this sort of car when they've had ownership of Lamborghini for 8 years now, gained vast performance experience from motorsport and Le Mans in particular, and have been perfecting the quattro system since the early 80's. All of this expereience plus their reputation for impeccable build quality, sound ergonomics and choice of quality materials to enhance the tactile ownership experience has been channeled into the flagship R8 making it a very good car as a result. The one thing that is missing from the mix is aspirational value. At the end of the day it carries an Audi badge and it will be very difficult for that to command serious desirability once the novelty factor has worn off, regardless of how good the car is. Just look at the VW Phaeton - probably the best engineered executive saloon with an eye watering price tag on launch which has simply slipped into undeserved obscurity because the brand was not strong enough to carry such a car. We shall have to wait and see if the same fate awaits the R8.

As for the V10 engined model, well there is some stiff competition ahead. Next year sees introduction of the revised Gallardo which is going to get a power hike of between 10 and 15% that could see it reach 600 bhp. Audi is never going to be allowed to outperform Lamborghini as long as both marques remain under the VW group umbrella. The men in suits at the top realise that the Italian brand has a far stronger market cachet which translates into more profit achievable per car. And don't forget that Porsche is now the largest shareholder in VW so they are not going to let the Porsche brand be devalued either so expect the dfi and pdk equipped 2009 models to answer the questions asked by the R8 and for the 998 sucessor to move the game on again when launched.

From here on in the race is going to be on for the greenest performance car not necessarily the fastest or highest bhp. Interesting times ahead I hope.

 

[Sunil]

ORIGINAL: isuk
From here on in the race is going to be on for the greenest performance car not necessarily the fastest or highest bhp. Interesting times ahead I hope.

Interestingly enough I had lunch with someone from Toyota, Japan, yesterday and he was telling me that Toyota/Lexus aren't using hybrid technology for their upcoming sports cars so much for economy but for more torque at lower speeds I was then promptly pointed in the direction of the Toyota FT-HS. The LF-A is supposed to be a rival for the Bentley Continental GT, Astons etc ... whereas the FT-HS will be more raw (a Japanese sports car that's raw?) although some websites are saying it's a Supra replacement but this may have something to do with its price point.

Well, that's what I could gather from the conversation as some stuff was lost in translation.

 

[sawood12]

I am a bit dissapointed in TG though. I've always enjoyed the show and always thought that they do a pretty good and fair job of comparing cars, but to put the C2S up against the R8 is clearly a mismatch - no offense to the C2S. In the dry i'm sure things would have been alot closer but a previous TG back to back test showed the C4S to be the quicker car, even though they preferred the purer feel of the C2S. And judging by the margin the R8 won by i'm pretty sure the C4S would have posted a pretty identical time and a C4S with X51 would in all probability seen it off. It's like saying - "The R8 is a better car than the almost-equivalent 911, but we're ignoring the real equivalent 911". It's like comparing apples with oranges, it just discredits the whole excercise. They had a chance to put the debate to bed, but they chose not to.

I suspect the R10 will be seen off by the 997 turbo. Even now there aren't many cars at any price that can hang onto its coat tails. For sheer out and out real-world pace in the hand of a normal person it has got to be unbeatable.

 

[mickshep]

I think that was Hammond's own C2S was it not, seem to remember an article in one of the mags might have been Porsche Post with his car and the black painted alloys ring a bell. If so fair play to the bloke especially as not only was he hammering it but the Stig put it on the grass all for our viewing pleasure. Maybe also explains the mismatch of not having a powerkit C4S up against the R8.

 

[m4ttc]

ORIGINAL: mickshep

I think that was Hammond's own C2S was it not, seem to remember an article in one of the mags might have been Porsche Post with his car and the black painted alloys ring a bell. If so fair play to the bloke especially as not only was he hammering it but the Stig put it on the grass all for our viewing pleasure. Maybe also explains the mismatch of not having a powerkit C4S up against the R8.

Not sure it was. I thought Hamster had a Slate grey C2S which is quite distinctive whereas the one one TG looked Meteor to me. Also thought his C2S got washed away in the summer floods[] I could quite easily be wrong though

 

[Alex L]

ORIGINAL: mickshep

I think that was Hammond's own C2S was it not, seem to remember an article in one of the mags might have been Porsche Post with his car and the black painted alloys ring a bell. If so fair play to the bloke especially as not only was he hammering it but the Stig put it on the grass all for our viewing pleasure. Maybe also explains the mismatch of not having a powerkit C4S up against the R8.

Yes, my initial reaction was that it was Hammond's own car.

 

[sawood12]

ORIGINAL: mickshep

I think that was Hammond's own C2S was it not, seem to remember an article in one of the mags might have been Porsche Post with his car and the black painted alloys ring a bell. If so fair play to the bloke especially as not only was he hammering it but the Stig put it on the grass all for our viewing pleasure. Maybe also explains the mismatch of not having a powerkit C4S up against the R8.

Stingy Hamster! Obvioiusly spend the £8k getting his teeth whitened and as a result this R8 vs 911 debate is going to rage on forever (it is getting a bit boring now). I wouldn't give him too much credit - I bet the got a new set of tyres and a new clutch courtesy of he BBC. Also he might have got some body work done as well. Did anyone else spot that after the drag race when the cars were parked nose to nose the number plate of Hammonds car was hanging off?

 

[garyw]

Yes, I spotted that, it was corrected in the next shot.
I'm surprised that JC didn't make a comment about it[8|]

garyw

 

[chrono]

ORIGINAL: sawood12

Did anyone else spot that after the drag race when the cars were parked nose to nose the number plate of Hammonds car was hanging off?

It looked like there was another plate underneath it, reinforcing our belief that the Hamsters private plates were covered up by another set. We were sure that it was his own car cos he made a comment about taking the kids to school in it that morning.

 

[Grant]

Saw an R8 in the flesh for the first time yesterday, sitting in the dealers showroom.

Have to say it looked fabulous outside & is also superb quality inside, much better in the flesh than in the pictures! Dare I say it makes the 911 look boring & awkward & its interior is so much better than the 997's that it is on another planet!

Whilst I am a long term Porsche owner & fan, I really do feel that Porsche needs to get real with future design, they proved they can do modern classic with the Carrera GT, whilst the 997 went from sleek modern 996 to retro 993 with a twist, so will the 998 be a 911SC clone?

 

[Dylan1]

nope-it will be a cayman with TT,lsd DI and opt.DSG[][][]

 

[garyw]

Having spent a bit of time in various Audi delaerships this weekend I've not seen a single R8 for less than £97K... now thats certainly not 997 C2 money is it ? [&:]

Cost was their basis for comparing those two cars...

garyw

 

[davidcross]

chaps, i have a 997s and wanted a trickle charger for the winter...any idea the best one to buy?? ive looked on the web but not sure what type i need given porsches tend to have heavy duty batteries