Audi R8 V8 (2007) review

Back in 2007, this cabin was so ice-cool that if you’d climbed out of a Porsche 911 just before getting into the R8, you’d have combusted with jealousy. This car came just at the time Audi was hitting its stride with cabins, moving away from well-built but tediously grey cockpits to design of real modernity and style.

Early cars like this one will be showing their age but respectably so. This particular car’s done 53,000 miles. Its early life was spent as the UK press car and it was actually featured on Top Gear telly with Clarkson himself behind the steering wheel. It’s got a bit glossier since then.

Inside, there’s some patina – the plastic has worn on the steering wheel spokes around the volume knob, the leather seats are shinier than Donald Trump’s suits, and the bolsters sag like his jowels.

But there are no squeaks or rattles. The FM radio doesn’t crackle. The air con blows cold, the bum warmers are fiery and beneath a scratched-up alloy gearknob lies the first R8’s defining party piece: the open-gate manual, as precise and purposeful as the day it left the factory for a hard life of impressing journalists.

As the lofty Mr Clarkson opined on your tellybox, there’s loads of space in the R8, and it’s quiet enough to do distance at speed in comfort. The R8’s reputation as a practical supercar is well-deserved – this feels miles more liveable, not to mention less dated, than a Gallardo of the same vintage. That said, some folks will find the general similarity to other Audis, in the dials, the switchgear and general layout – a tad underwhelming. For those folks, we say, there’s always the Gallardo.

While we’re nitpicking, the MMI system is very behind-the-times now, you’ll need to keep an old iPod on standby if you want to listen to your own playlists, and the sat-nav is so behind the times there’ll be whole countries it’s not aware of. But you’ve got a smartphone for that, right?