Who wouldn’t want a 500 hp candy cane delivered within a week of Christmas. It’s big, red, shiny, and the most power I know of under $50,000. And every single person that sees it notices it. For those who are looking to over-compensate with their vehicle, look no further.
I don’t think there was a single time someone walked by this car when I was either getting in or out and didn’t comment. The gas attendant, who saw it from afar, and staring at it as he walked up to take my order, merely said “That’s what I’m asking for for Christmas.” The homeless man who rode his bike/trailer combo by my house one afternoon only saw it from behind, and with the trunk open, but still was exclaiming about how hot my ride was from 20 feet away. Getting out at my friend’s house, at 8pm in the evening, elicited shouts from the neighbor porch, “Hey man, you wanna sell me your car!” Over and over again, this was the object of attention. And for anyone who rode in it, it held their attention the entire time.
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I just got back from a trip to Washington’s Olympic Peninsula. If you’ve never been, and have longed to visit a single place on earth that might be deemed pre-historic, then the OP is your spot.
Much of the area is made up of temperate rain forest, huge ancient greenery fueled by a dozen feet of annual rain. But it is the Olympic Mountains that fortify the place, turn it into something slightly menacing and grand. They stand as craggy sentinels forced to the ready with each passing day as the Pacific Plate ducks for cover beneath North America. Seriously, from sea level to 7,000 feet in a matter of miles, nothing compares on the breathtaking scale.
Unless you happen to be driving Audi’s new R8 sports car. Then, and only then, do you have some frame of reference. Environmentalists and Earth-Firsters will choke on their granola at the thought, but reviews of slick Teutonic machinery aren’t made for them, are they? Especially then that machinery sports a mid-mounted V8 that wants nothing to do with fuel made from restaurant grease or hemp oil.
So what does it want, this new and wholly unexpected departure from Ingolstadt’s tradtional uber-sedan line-up? 91 Octane, that’s what, and keep it comin’, Hans.
Into its now familiar line-up of all-wheel-drive (quattro, in Audispeak) family cars–A4, A6, A8, the sporty S4, S6, S8, and the always necessary track-ready RS4–Audi gives car geeks and serious drivers alike something new to get excited about. But the R8 isn’t that new, really.
It is based on the LeMans show car of 2003, and in several ways it resembles the Avus quattro, a 1991 concept penned by Jay Mays, of retro Beetle, Thunderbird, Mustang, and GT fame. I’ve got my own issues with Mays’s now-stagnant philsophy, but the Avus was then and is now a stunner. Powered by a mid-mounted W12 (three banks of inline 4-cylinder engines) the unpainted aluminum supercar teased us all.
But the company’s image was still suffering in America because of its “sudden, inadvertent acceleration” problem, and the last thing anybody wanted was that kind of worry in a 500-hp, umpteen-hundred-thousand-dollar car. No way were they gonna build that sucker.
It only took 17 years, but Audi is in a much better place these days, having won the last 85 or so runnings of the 24 Hours of Le Mans, and having taken a serious fight to the rest of the Germans and Japanese competing for the gimme-gimme condo’d suburbanite set. And I’ll only briefly mention the emerging upper class in China, which currently serves as Audi’s biggest market.
So, history lesson aside, just what is so breathtaking about the new R8? I’ll start where you won’t expect me to: $109,000. That’s dirt cheap in a world of $170k Ferrari F430s and Lamborghini Gallardos. Even the aforementioned Ford GT–now just a used car–still costs more. For the money you get 420 hp, 317 ft-lbs of torque, a seriously efficient 6-speed (Audi’s trick R-tronic semi-automatic adds $10k to the pricetag), triple-take looks, precise road presence, nasty get-up, mean, mean brakes, and room for two adults plus a few rolls of quarters. Really, do you need much more?
I’ll here share a brief story from the Peninsula—telling, I think, of the choices this car gives its driver.
I motored along a twisty two-lane road with Mario, Audi’s Euro-cool and cigarette-infused PR rep by my side, whereby I encountered a semi truck. The whole road carried a double yellow, which matters little when you’re driving the latest, greatest supercar, and even less when your wife’s not there to yell at you.
I had only to wait for a brief straight, and “brief” is the operative word. There is no winding up in this car, no building of momentum, no matter the gear. The straight appeared, I flicked it down to third, and off I went, only slightly catching a glimpse of a jogger up ahead on the right-side shoulder. The trucker, of course, saw him plain as day and began to move out to give the runner a wide berth on this narrow road. And why wouldn’t he in this no-passing zone?
I lifted briefly and was reminded of the scene in “Star Wars” when the walls of the garbage crusher begin to close in on our panicked heroes. Mr. Tobacco, who hadn’t seen the jogger, said only, “He seems not to like you very much.”
Here I found myself exactly halfway alongside the 60-ft truck and, in my instant deliberation, saw three options: Those mean, mean brakes; that nasty acceleration; a foul, costly ditch.
The R8 is breathtaking, and I did not see that truck again.
There are days when your life is bad, when your friends don’t call and it rains and you are so broke McDonald’s Value Meal sounds expensive. I’ve been there. But then there are days when you can drive a BMW Z4 3.0 through winding roads, sun shining through the summer trees, top down and feeling the 85 degree air whip hair into a tangled mess. Those are the days I feel like I’m in a commercial, and that I truly am blessed, and a bastard.
In fact, that’s 94% of everything wrong with this car. When people see a young, 31-year-old guy driving a BMW Z4 on a summer day with his young wife sitting shotgun, you immediately gain their disdain. I had so many people NOT let me merge, NOT let me into traffic, and generally NOT look at me with nice expressions. I can understand, driving this car, I must look like a guy who has it all, and probably hasn’t had to work that hard for it. Whether or not that’s true is not up for debate. When people see you in this car, that’s what they’ll assume.
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The BMW X3 is exactly what you’d hope from a small, yet very sporty, SUV. While definitely playing kid brother to the larger X5, and possibly missing out on some of those big-brother good looks, it’s still an incredibly strong offering all around. From the moment you walk up the vehicle, slide in, and start it up, you’re presented with several luxuries that just aren’t found in other vehicles in the small SUV class. And once you take it through some corners, or sprint past a fellow-commuter on the freeway with a flick of the throttle, you’re convinced you’ve made a wise investment getting the X3.
Recently having driven a Ford Explorer (priced at $39k versus the X3’s $44k), this car offered improvements in almost every area of driving, except a third-row of seating. Cornering in this car was about as good as any SUV I’ve ever driven, and the feel of the leather wrapped steering wheel to the elegant control panel, consistently reminded me that I was driving what many in the world consider the most amazingly engineered cars in the world. It isn’t a tough sell.
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