Audi R8 V10 2019 UK first drive

The interior of the car’s almost unaltered. By the best supercar standards this remains a relatively easy car to get into, with its lowish sills, conventional doors and respectably large door apertures. Occupant space once you’re in is pretty good though not quite class-leading. The interior still seems laudible for its apparent tactile quality and high standard of finish, while the Virtual Cockpit instrument display still has the capacity to impress with its slick graphical configurability. If you’ve seen it all before inside an Audi Q2, of course, you’ll have considerably less reason to be impressed.

There’s decent cargo storage under the bonnet, and a bit of useful space for smaller bags and coats behind the seats; so practicality’s good. That said, if you want a really practical mid-engined supercar these days, you’d probably buy a McLaren 570 GT instead – which is just another factor that’s made life a bit harder for this car over the years.

A good job, then, that many wouldn’t need a second reason to own an R8. Even though the car’s entry-level price has just crept up by another couple of percentage points, it remains truly remarkable to discover that an engine as epic as this V10 can be had in something costing little more than the price of a mid-range Porsche 911. The soundtrack, the incredible linearity and the unfiltered, unexpurgated, high-revving charm of that engine are wonderful reminders of a time when crisp atmospheric aspiration was a minimum requirement for a mid-engined exotic like this. And yet somehow it’s also such an esoteric and unusual motor, unlike any other I can think of. A motor fit to utterly dominate the whole character and make-up of a car like this, too – which it duly does.

Both the R8’s standard passive steering set-up and its optional active-variable-ratio ‘dynamic steering’ system have been retuned as part of this facelift, but the latter has only been made available on limited-edition Audi R8 ‘Decennium’ cars in the UK so far (Audi says it’ll be added to the rest of the model range later). The standard set-up is unusually slow-geared for a supercar, having fully three turns between locks and a not-especially-tight turning circle. And, while it does show some worthwhile but modest improvements on weighting and contact patch feel, that standard steering rack is your first clue that what you’re about to experience is a car whose ride and handling are like backing vocals to the car’s soprano combustion engine.

The standard R8’s ride is unexpectedly fluent and supple – the kind that tends to keep contact patches in unwavering contact with Tarmac, and that gives you the confidence you need to unleash a 562bhp engine on a typical country road without really thinking about it. There no tetchiness about the R8’s damping, or highly-strung excitability about its springing; just strangely pragmatic poise and real-world purposefulness.

The car feels heavier and softer than most of its ilk when you’re hurrying through a corner; body control is still very good, but not so good as to cut lateral roll out completely, or to mask the influence of the weight of that engine, which is made to feel as if it must sit at a fairly lofty height behind your shoulder. The upshot? That this particular R8 doesn’t carve and rotate its way towards an apex with the keenness that mid-engined cars often show. It’s certainly no slouch for handling response, though – and it knows all about imperturbable on-throttle traction and stability. But it isn’t so feisty; and, as regards its handling at least, it isn’t that much fun.

For outright balance, limit-handling adjustability and that last layer of fully formed driver appeal, the R8 is likewise to be found wanting. The car’s all-paw drivetrain doesn’t allow you as many options to move the rear axle around with power as rival rear-driven supercars supply; and while the chassis makes it remarkably easy to carry speed and wring every last drop of fury out of that V10 wherever and whenever you dare, it doesn’t deliver handling as lively or engaging as you might want from a top-level driver’s car.