THE FOIBLES I ONCE FOUND CHARMING STARTED TO GRATE ON ME

After several months of gushing on about how wonderful the R8 has been to own, this month it’s in for some criticism.

While I have tremendously enjoyed driving the Audi over the last few months, I have never used it as daily transport. Instead, its role has always been of joy rider rather than mundane commuter. Not that it’s uncomfortable or impractical, on the contrary, it is about as useable as an exotic car can get. It’s just that I live pretty close to the office, the mall, the supermarket and the racetrack. In other words, the places that I travel to most often are rarely more than a 10 minute drive, which is barely enough time to get the fluids up to operating temperature.  For that reason I spend 90 per cent of my driving time behind the wheel of my trusty Range Rover. I just don’t see the point in putting depreciating mileage on my R8 when I can’t even rev the engine. Last month that all changed when, for about 10 days, I didn’t have use of the Range Rover and took the Audi everywhere instead.

And that’s when a few little things started to get under my skin – all of which involve the R tronic transmission. This is quite ironic since it is the car’s single biggest compromise towards practicality. The automated manual transmission is the main reason I don’t fear attacking Dubai’s soul-crushing traffic in the R8, as it saves me the agony of what can be hours of stop-start traffic and the exhausting clutching and de-clutching that goes with it. Unfortunately, it is far from perfect.

The foibles I once found charming eventually started to grate on me. My first complaint is that when the car is at a standstill, it takes a long time for the hydraulically operated clutch to engage, making it feel like I am riding the clutch every time I get on the throttle. This also means that, when pulling away from a junction it takes too long to get moving. Even worse though, is when you are performing a three-point turn, where you have to move back and forth quickly for short distances, making it very difficult to carry out smoothly. Every time I come off the throttle there’s an abrupt jerk as the car comes to a halt.

Another complaint with the flappy paddle transmission is that it holds on to gears for too long when in automatic mode. The revs end up being too high for cruising, so I find myself reaching for the right paddle to grab a higher gear, which of course causes the transmission to pop back into manual mode where I have to shift myself. Not exactly a hardship but slightly frustrating nonetheless, as it defeats the whole purpose of having an automatic mode.

The final letdown with the R tronic is the quality of its shifts. When you are pottering along, the swapping of cogs is usually accompanied by a hesitation that causes your head to tilt forward every time. To avoid this I often find myself easing off the throttle to smooth the engagement of the next gear.  Press the sport mode button and the harshness of the shift is magnified tenfold, snapping your neck forward with a violent jolt as it cuts the shift time down in the interest of maximum forward motion. Normally I wouldn’t mind these shift characteristics as they lend an air of sportiness and aggression, but in the case of the R8 I’m finding it frustrating. In comfort mode it’s not smooth enough to be properly comfortable, while in sport mode it doesn’t shift fast enough compared to the latest generations of semi-automatic gearboxes including VW/Audi’s excellent DSG transmission.

Don’t get me wrong, the R8 is still a brilliant car. In my opinion it is still best in class, looks stunning, handles superbly and I’m in no hurry to trade it in any time soon.  Despite the above criticisms it is definitely useable on a daily basis and to be honest, my time spent using it as daily transport has made me want to drive it more, not less; while the R-tronic has many faults and is far from the best transmission of its type. It’s also far from the worst.

While a conventional manual gearbox would be more rewarding from a driving point of view, and would eliminate the above complaints, I wouldn’t want a manual as it’d remove a lot of the practicality of my R8 in the city environment I mostly use it in.  Besides, I’m just nitpicking with these complaints. I still think my R8 is pretty darn close to perfection.