AUDI R8 4.2 FSI

HOLLYWOOD MOVIE TRAILER COPY-writer might have put it thus: 2007, the year everything changed. Of course, anyone myopic enough to attach the gravel-voiced pronouncement to the advent of a mere car might find it hard to dismiss the following year’s global financial meltdown as a minor diversion. But this was personal.

For well over a decade, nothing had come close to challenging the notion that the Porsche 911 might just be the world’s most perfectly resolved driving machine. It was the benchmark that wouldn’t rub out, the endlessly evolved marvel that confounded convention, bestriding the sports car/supercar divide with charisma to burn and the only serial winner of evo’s Car of the Year.

That the Audi R8 4.2 FSI quattro, launched in 2007, had it on the back foot straight out of the box quickly took on the look of the mythologised great reset, delivered in a bolt of lightning. Fourteen years on, the shock of the new has faded. The R8 – now V10-powered, heavier, brawnier, with aesthetic alterations that appear to have been pinched from cinematic Batman’s recent muscle-suits – is more Lambo Huracán wingman (same powertrain and platform) than the lithe, supple, junior supercar that beat the naturally aspirated, all-drive 911 of the day at its own