Audi R8 triple test: V10 Plus vs V10 vs Spyder

Let’s call this a happy coincidence. I’d booked the blue Audi R8 V10 coupe in as a compare-and-contrast with my V10 Plus and the dates happened to coincide with the launch of the new V10 Spyder.

So, all currently available R8s (a V10 Plus Spyder is only a matter of time, and presumably some sort of hardcore one, too) in the TG car park at the same time. Better still, all in perfectly contrasting specs.

This was really interesting. One of my minor criticisms of the R8 is that the seat is mounted too high. The Spyder had the lower slung one-piece buckets fitted. The gearing of my Plus is also shorter to maximise acceleration. But as a daily thing I’ve wondered if the longer gears (from fourth to seventh) of the standard 533bhp V10 might be more relaxing, economical and companionable. Would that be the case? And would that even be a good thing? Anyway, several questions to answer.

Going back to our yellow Plus: its £137,450 list price is padded out with £16,000 of options – and it already comes notably better equipped than the £122,450 standard version. Not only do you get an extra 69bhp, but also carbon ceramic brakes, one-piece bucket seats (that’s right, I deselected them), carbon rear spoiler, mirrors and side blades, sports exhaust and matt carbon inside. All of which help to justify the £15,000 price leap. It looks the wotsits, especially inside.

The blue one, fattened by a mere £5,600 of options, none of them cosmetic, is rather plain inside. It looks too much like a TT to me, the grey plastic and flatter seats dulling visual impact. Make what you will of the diamond-pattern yellow stitching and carbon trim in our yellow car, but personally I think it sets the car off a treat (but then I would say that, having specced it in the first place…)

I’m not a fan of the Rotor grey cabin in the Spyder either, but more importantly I’m relieved to find out I made the right decision by not having the full bucket seats. They lower you in the car (handy if you’re lanky or just have to have a low driving position) but they’re too thinly padded and not well enough shaped to be a worthwhile addition.

It would be fine if they provided spectacular support, had super-grippy Alcantara cladding or did something different, but although the side bolsters are high, I’ve never found the lesser sports seats, with their adjustable side bolsters, short of support. And the non-adjustable backrest isn’t quite at the right angle. It’s too upright, so I was forever trying to work out if there was a backrest lever that I just hadn’t found yet. And they cost £3,000 to add to the standard V10… Still, drop in the ocean of this particular Spyder, which wore £37,750 of extras, taking the price to £167,740.

Coupe or Spyder? Coupe for me – I love a roadster, but don’t love the way this one looks. It’s too bulky at the back. However, it does have a great little trick. Drive it with the roof up and you can drop the glass back window, adding extra clarity to the V10’s astonishing song. It’s like listening to a live performance instead of a studio recording. But all it chiefly did was make me wish the coupe had the same feature.

Anyway, some driving. The blue car didn’t have the £1,600 Magnetic Ride dampers. Just the ordinary, non-adjustable passive dampers. It was mega. Felt more natural than mine and didn’t porpoise and bounce over speedbumps. OK, it doesn’t quite have the breadth of comfort and firmness that the adaptive dampers give mine, but as a one-position set-up, it’s bob-on. I will say this, though: cars built now have a revised Magnetic Ride system. I haven’t had the chance to drive a car with it yet. Sorry.

The plain V10’s longer gearing drops the rpm at 70mph from 2900rpm to 1900rpm. That’s a big drop. It makes the car feel a tad calmer and less urgent, which is a good thing for a daily, but it also means you need kickdown more often, where the Plus will hold seventh and use the torque, which I prefer. And if I turn the Plus’s sports exhaust off, it’s quiet enough that it doesn’t compete with the B&O tunes, so I can cruise comfortably.

Did fuel economy benefit? To the tune of about 1mpg – the Plus does 22mpg on a steady motorway haul, the non-Plus managed about 23.2mpg. Negligible really – I’d hoped for 25mpg from the detuned one but it was never going to happen. All R8’s have cylinder deactivation. I’ve never managed to detect it working, and certainly have never been aware of any pause in the V10 while it has to put the pistons back to work.

Evidence that it is doing something comes from the fact the claimed combined mpg is 23.0mpg (24.8mpg for the non-Plus), and we’re managing something close to that, which we never do normally.

Other stuff: steel brakes are better for regular driving than ceramics – they’re less grabby at low speed and pedal feel and bite is just as good. And despite the extra 40kg and 69bhp shortfall, the non-Plus is every bit as fast. I think my car feels fractionally more urgent through the upper reaches of each gear, but against the clock…

Here’s the thing. We ran the numbers on both cars. The yellow Plus hit 60mph and 100mph in 3.1 and 6.6 seconds respectively. The blue car hit the yardsticks in 3.0 and 6.6 seconds. So, just as fast – and half a second faster to 60mph than they claim.

Even when we dig down into the data a bit further, that holds true. Despite the power shortfall the 540bhp car was just as fast to 130mph (11secs plays 11.1), and at the bottom end actually launched slightly better, giving it a genuine sub-3 to 60mph time: it recorded 2.96secs, against 3.07secs.

In case you’re wondering, it’s not just Audi that have claimed performance differences between cars that aren’t as noticeable in reality. The McLaren 540C is meant to be three-tenths slower than a 570S to 60mph, but when we tested them it was only three-tenths behind up past 100mph, and to 60mph was just a solitary hundredth of a second behind.

Back to the Audi conundrum. Were I ordering an R8 again, I could make do with a standard V10, but would have to pad it out with so many options to get the spec right that I’d end up having a Plus anyway. So I’d have the Plus. Leaving Magnetic Ride off the spec sheet might harm residuals a little, but the more I think about it, the more I’d do without them. Aside from that, I still think ours is about spot-on – although in essence there’s only one absolute no-no when speccing an R8. You mustn’t have Dynamic Steering.