Features

OK, so the R8 is indisputably better with a six-speed manual. But even that wouldn't have spared it a humbling by GT-R on this road. The Nissan simply flattens the undulating stuff like a turbocharged steam-roller, while the R8 demands much more concentration. The Audi bobs and darts, feels more alive and alert. It's like a big, German Elise. Usually benign, it suddenly feels very mid-engined indeed. The GT-R just gets on with the job. Very, very quickly. Awesome brakes, too. It's a deeply impressive car.

We arrive at the Hakone Turnpike at 8am, after just four hours fitful sleep. It's now called the Toyo Tires Turnpike, thanks to a sponsorship deal set up by the road's Australian owner, the vast property and finance conglomerate Macquarie (which also, fact fans, owns and runs our very own M6 toll road. It's the Rupert Murdoch of the highway). We pay and enter. On a hillside car park inscribed with tell-tale tyre burn-out marks, a surprise guest, Japanese Stig, arrives to officiate. It's the final big face-off of the year: GT-R v R8.

If there's a problem with the GT-R, then it's this: like Ferrari's 430 Scuderia and Porsche's Turbo, it's one of those ultra-modern cars that's almost too fast for its own good. Its four-wheel drive system and computer firepower is now so effective, its bespoke Bridgestone rubber - chosen after 3,000 wheel and tyre combinations were assessed - so dizzyingly capable, that trying to find the limit in this thing becomes a form of madness.

Have an accident in a GT-R, and it would be measurable on the Richter scale. Torque is split according to speed, engine revs, load, acceleration, steering input, yaw angle, and wheel slip. The result? I seriously doubt there is a car on the planet that can corner faster or more aggressively than this. On a super-fast, fourth-gear left-hander, it will not be moved.

On the same corner, the Audi can, and does, move. That's the difference. It's simultaneously less impressive and yet somehow more involving. Strange as it sounds, it's the R8 - a four-wheel drive Audi of all things - that really plugs you into this sort of road, and feeds back what it finds more effectively through the wheel. The GT-R is so fast that it'll already be contemplating the next corner. But what matters more: how quickly you get where you're going or the quality of the experience as you're doing it?

The experience. And that's why the R8 just shades it - because it rewards driver input. In the Nissan, you get the feeling that the car could probably go even faster if it didn't have you, a mere human being, dicking about at the wheel. The GT-R is part car, part Terminator.

And it's no loser. It's a landmark, an engineering masterpiece. It's much faster than the Audi and goes harder generally. And when it lands in the UK in March 2009, it will cost £55,000. A bargain. By then, a lighter V Spec version will have broken cover, too. A future Car of the Year? Don't bet against it.

The R8 is fantastic in a way that will appeal more to true car enthusiasts; lithe, agile, beautifully engineered. It's even got soul,
a remarkable achievement for an Audi.

Jason Barlow

Car Reviews
Audi
Audi R8