2014 Audi R8- Car Reviews
Most of you know me from my food, travel and product reviews but I recently had the chance to do a few car reviews, one of them being for the spectacular 2014 Audi R8. This is not the car that middle-aged men with crises buy. This is a car that is intelligently thought-out when purchasing. This is a car for people who work hard and play hard. You want luxury, you want style, you want grace and speed all in one- the 2014 Audi R8 is perfect for you.
The Audi R8 is the car to take us out of our daily schedules and just fall in love with life all over again.
I’m not the typical car reviewer so the aspects that matter more to me are likely to be different than those that interest the thousands of male reviewers online.
Sure, I care that the Audi R8 goes from 0 to 60 in just 4 seconds (specs online say anywhere from 4.2 seconds to 4.8 but I tested this myself on an open road and believe me, it was a flat 4 seconds). I can spout to you all the specs like how several versions of the R8 are available with 430-horsepower V8 engine or a 525-horsepower V10 engine, but these numbers mean little to me when purchasing the actual vehicle.
If you have the purchasing power to actually comparison shop between the 2014 Audi R8 and its competitors such as Porsche 911 and Maserati, those specs don’t differ all that much. At least to me, it doesn’t make a difference whether a car goes from 0 to 60 in 4 seconds or 4.5 seconds. I’m not drag racing (those days are long past) and I have no intention of racing on a track. Any vehicle of this caliber that I have serious intention of purchasing will be because of a whole list of other attributes.
The tan leather seats in the 2014 Audi R8 I drove were super plush, soft and cocooned my body in a way that few sports cars ever have, and certainly none in its class. I can tell you that after driving this gorgeous sports car for just a week, I knew I could never sit in a Porsche again (sorry Porsche!). Other than when driving over unfortunate speed bumps or pot holes (unavoidable on the streets of San Francisco), sitting in the Audi R8 was no less comfortable than sitting in a Mercedes S 500.
The comfortable grip of the steering wheel was a huge plus for me, given that many sports cars I’ve been in surprisingly didn’t think of this. Equipped with a large screen in the middle between the dashboard and the glove compartment that is reminiscent of Tesla’s screen, the Audi R8’s navigation and sound system is user-friendly, well thought out and easy on the eyes.
Well-placed convenient compartments between the driver and passenger seats make for much needed storage for cell phones, sunglasses, keys and small wallets. This storage space is another aspect that many other sports cars don’t think of and skimp on, which makes sense if a sports car is truly meant to be just raced on a track. Nowadays though, people dropping over $100,000 on a sports car want to do more than just collect dust on these investments. They want to do more than just take the occasional spin every so often.
And that’s where this Audi R8 really wins. The interiors are far more luxurious than most of its competitors and its ride surprisingly smooth even on local streets that this sports car can and should be an everyday drive for those fortunate enough to be able to buy it.
Unlike previous years’ versions of the R8, the 2014 R8 introduces new LED headlights and accent lights- all noticeably gorgeous at night. You can tell this is a stunning car of a totally different caliber from several blocks away.
The version I drove was the dual-clutch model and reportedly gets 14 mpg local and 23 mpg highway. My experience driving the R8 around for over a week was quite different. I drove this baby all around the San Francisco Bay Area, on local streets, on highways and yes, up and down the famous hills of SF itself. I was thrilled to see that average mpg between local and highway was closer to the reported 23. Sticking strictly to local and getting stuck in pockets of rush hour traffic, it was still hovering around 18 mpg.
It’s a smooth ride and shifting from low to high speeds was buttery soft with hardly noticeable shifts. The only time I felt pushed back against my seat was when accelerating from 80 to 110 mph.
To recap, I would strongly recommend the 2014 Audi R8 to anyone looking to purchase in this class for these reasons alone:
- Luxurious interiors with wood finishes and plush leather seats as comfortable as a Mercedes S500
- Super user-friendly navigation and sound system with back-facing cameras for easy parking and backing up
- Better local, highway and average mileage than many other supercars
- Gorgeous exteriors with futuristic LED headlights and accent lights that make this car easy to spot from blocks away
- Goes from 0 to 60 in exactly 4 seconds
- Anti-lock Brake System with Electronic Brake-pressure Distribution and brake assist
- Electronic Stability Control with Traction Control
- Driver and Passenger Dual-stage airbags with head/thorax side airbags and knee airbags
- Roars with the grace and ferocity of the king of the jungle
- Has a cool mechanism for raising and opening its hard top
- Is not the car of choice for men with mid-life crises and is pretty rare on the streets.
The 2014 Audi R8 starts at US $115,000 and is available in various colors, in V8, V10, V10 Plus, Coupe or Convertible.