I believe one of the most underrated supercars in the world is the Audi R8. Most of the people I’ve spoken to who have owned one, absolutely love them.
The Audi R8 was based on a Le Mans quattro concept car that first appeared in 2003 at both the Frankfurt and Geneva International Motor Shows and was then officially launched at the Paris Auto Show in September 2006.
Initially it was sold standard with a 4.2-liter V8 engine and an optional 5.2-liter V10 that was borrowed from the Lamborghini Gallardo, with the second generation coming out in 2017 with only the V10 motor.
Because of its comfort and overall driveability, the R8 quickly became a sought-after supercar for consumers that wanted to drive their vehicles. In fact, six time 24 Hours of Le Mans winner Jacky Ickx once said it was “the best handling road car” he’d driven.
In 2011 Audi introduced the high-performance GT model and although it didn’t become one of the most popular supercars around, it did effectively give the marque an extremely good vehicle to build their RS performance vehicles on, and consequently become a strength in motorsport – particularly in Europe, as this link and video shows.
But as good as the Audi R8 performance was, due to dwindling world sales and back as far as 2017, Audi were planning to discontinue it around 2022 and replace it with an all-electric hyper car. As time would have it, the Audi R8 will cease to be manufactured this year, and as this carsales.com.au article outlines, its replacement will be all electric.
Next all-electric Audi R8 to ride on new supercar platform – carsales.com.au
As a point of interest, in late 2021, Audi ceased importing the R8 into Australia due to homologation issues regarding stricter emissions and noise regulations that are in place here and the fact that the Australian sales were minimal compared to the rest of the world; since 2007 only 681 R8’s were sold here, including 103 in 2008 and only 29 in 2021.
All this aside, I still reckon they are great cars.