Fans of the Bavarian brand have been begging for a proper supercar for decades now. BMW has only made one true mid-engine supercar in its entire history — the BMW M1. Though the BMW i8 is mid-engine and uses a carbon tub, its performance and handling aren’t really up to snuff for a supercar. So BMW fans have wanted the brand to make a real-deal supercar for a long time and the newly revealed Audi R8 V10 facelift isn’t helping.
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The Audi R8 has been the quintessential German supercar since its debut back in 2008. Iron Man’s car is exactly the sort of supercar you’d expect the Germans to make — something cool looking but not wild and high-performance but not high maintenance. An everyday, sensible supercar, if there can be such a thing. Now, it’s on its last legs, as Audi plans on killing the R8 in 2020. But it’s getting a facelift before it leaves and it reminds us of how much we want BMW to make a supercar.
Packing the same 5.2 liter naturally-aspirated V10, just with new states of tune, the newly facelifted Audi R8 V10 makes 570 hp and the Audi R8 V10 Plus makes 620 hp. That’s a lot of horsepowers. In fact, it’s so many horsepowers, that the V10 Plus is likely to hit 60 mph in around 2.7 seconds (Audi claims 3.1 seconds but multiple publications have clocked real world times of 2.8 seconds for the pre-facelift ‘Plus).
Doesn’t that sound appealing? The idea of a mid-mounted, naturally-aspirated engine, screaming away behind your head, in a sexy, sleek, two-seat supercar is one that any enthusiast can get behind. BMW admittedly hasn’t made a naturally-aspirated engine in many years but I wouldn’t throw a mid-mounted S58 outta bed.
There have been some rumors from BMW internally about the Bavarians actually considering a mid-engine supercar based off of the BMW i8. It would still be a hybrid but it would pack a bigger internal-combustion engine and would make a lot more power. It might even be rear-wheel drive.
Now these talks are just that — talks. Nothing more as of right now. So don’t get your hopes up. But the Audi R8 V10 is the only mid-engine German supercar on sale right now and it shouldn’t be. There should be more and BMW should make one.
[Source: QuattroDaily]
The only mid-engine German supercar only exists because Volkswagen bought Lamborghini.
… but it exists, and judging by quit a number of publications, it is a good sports car.
Reminds me of a time I had a wish for BMW, when the Maserati was on offer. My dream wish was for BMW to buy it, I thought that would have been a very beautiful mariage.
And like the Audi, the Maserati exists only because of corporate cheque book parts bin engineering & marketing. Yet when BMW do something from the ground up clean sheet innovative & original like the i8, it gets criticized as slow, underpowered & needing an ICE superrcar, thereby completely missing the point of why i8 exists. Doubt very much FCA or Ferrari would sell Maserati to BMW, or that BMW would be stupid enough to want to buy them.
What about the Mercedes AMG One?
The AMG One is a highly-exclusive hypercar. I wouldn’t include the Porsche 918 Spyder in this, either, if it were still on sale.
And so unlike i8, never produced in enough #’s to actually be seen on the road.
British. Like their F1 team.
Lol 😂🤣😝. Damn, you just killed ‘em…
Its all about Lewis. Isn’t it?
VW did ? :P
Independent, Saturday, June 13, 1998. Also reported VW bought Rolls-Royce, whoops!
Well when they post it it has to be true.^^
BMW is too busy designing butt-ugly iNext cars.
True… sadly.
“BMW Group takes five wins at the ‘iF Design Award 2017′” – BMWblog, March 14th 2017. Slow year.
It’s no more v10 plus it’s now v10 performance
Never liked the R8. The rear portion behind the windscreen is too long and the hood is too short. It looks like it’s about to fall over all the time.
looks outdated