ge5002892406576941708
ge5695007356124148932
ge5542739321895369131
ge5260349298876373970
ge5559314754740548438
Michael Taylor28 Jul 2014
REVIEW

Audi R8 LMX 2014 Review

This car is a celebration car that at once looks back to the R8’s glorious past and looks forward with the stupendous potential of Laser Lights. And it’s both fast and rare. What could be wrong with that combination?

Audi R8 LMX

The car built to steal the laser-light crown from BMW, the R8 couldn’t be more different from the i8. Where the BMW is a plug-in hybrid, the Audi uses the most powerful version yet of the R8’s 5.2-litre, naturally aspirated V10. It’s fast, loud and easy to drive and, if that’s not enough, it will let you see 600 metres up the night-time road…

What do you do with a car built for a race it didn’t win? If you’re
Ferrari, you revel in its continued outrageous auction prices,
regardless of whether you’re talking about the 250 GTO or the 250
Testarossa. If you’re Jaguar, you keep wheeling out replicas of the
XJR13 because it’s just so pretty. If you’re Toyota, you turn the 1998
TS020 Le Mans loser into a GranTurismo hero.

But if you’re Audi, and you know you were being a bit cheeky in the first place, you simply just change tack and call the R8 LMX a celebration of the R8’s history. It’s the last of the line before Audi shows the replacement car, probably at October’s Paris motor show.

It’s also the fastest. With 419kW of power out of that glorious, naturally aspirated 5.2-litre V10, the R8 LMX is a seriously quick piece of kit. It’s a car that is, essentially, an R8 V10 Plus plus, with everything the R8 V10 Plus has and more.

The mid-engined V10 produced 15 kW more power, for example, and the sprint to 100km/h is over and done after 3.4 seconds. And it will run to 320km/h, even with its fixed carbon-fibre rear wing sticking up into the airflow.

It has viscous coupling-style all-wheel drive security and a seven-speed dual-clutch transmission to pull its 1595kg up the road at ferocious speed. It also rides on 235/35 R19 front tyres and 305/30 R19 rear tyres and uses carbon-ceramic brakes as standard.

It’s also stupendously well trimmed inside, with diamond-quilted stitching on the Alcantara roof, even though it’s a lightweight (cough cough – it’s still 1595kg) special with carbon-fibre seats, complete with electric adjustments for the leg and side bolstering.

But the R8 LMX isn’t about the mechanicals, as helpful as they might be. This car was conceived with one thing in mind: to beat the BMW i8 onto market to become the first car in production car history to be delivered with laser headlights.

It infamously lost that race by a matter of days after BMW reacted to a gloating Audi R8 LMX press release by pulling forward deliveries of its first laser-equipped i8s in Bavaria. But the R8 LMX remains, with just 99 examples being built and only three of them coming to Australia.

The R8 LMX is a normal, up-powered special-edition towards the end of a car’s life cycle with two very special exceptions. Each headlight runs LEDs for the high and low beams, but has an additional Laser Light to fly in above the high beam. At least Audi didn’t go completely overboard and use the Matrix LED system, but that was only because the R8’s headlight shape was too shallow to allot it.

The result is phenomenal, and that’s just the cost. In Germany, this car costs 210,000 euros, which jumps to $440,000 in Australia. The lighting is, as Audi admits, young and immature technology, so it costs more.

This Laser Light technology was developed in part with Osram, which Audi shares as a diode supplier with BMW, and its core system is derived from the laser diode in BlueRay DVD players.

You can manually choose high or low beam via the conventional flick on the light lever at the left of the steering wheel, but to preload the R8 for the Laser Lights, you just give it a soft pull to start its automatic lighting setting.

This in place, it relies on a camera in front of the rear-view mirror to assess whether it’s safe to fire up the high beam and then, on top of that, whether it’s safe to “arm the laser”.

It needs it, because the LED beams give an enormous spread of clear, white light way out into the trees, while the Laser Lights, when they kick in, don’t. Instead, they fire two cannons of light out into the distance, stretching out to 600 metres in front of the car.

It’s quite the orchestra of sensors and switching, with the car dropping back from laser to high beam to low beam and back again as cars come and go in the Bavarian night, but it’s the Laser Lights that steal the show.

Time and again they reach out in two narrow points of light so far up the road that few drivers would be looking that far even in daylight. It’s a clear light but it’s narrow, isolated to the road width itself and not giving hints about what’s beside it. That area is fleshed out by the LED high beam.

And it doesn’t take the R8 LMX very long to cover 600 metres, which is one of the reasons why they introduced it on this car.

It takes the R8 Plus’s engine and delivers another 15kW of power, to top out at 419kW at 8000rpm, stretching it with 540Nm of torque from 6500rpm. It’s enough to get to 100km/h in just 3.4 seconds and on to a top speed of 320km/h.

Sadly for us, traffic conditions on the autobahn limited us to about 280km/h and the car was beginning to feel light in the nose, despite its carbon-fibre front splitter and aero side flics. Other than that, it was rock solid and stable at speed.

The odd thing about it, though, is that there is no ultra aggressive punch or scream from the R8 LMX. Even with all this power, the car feels like it just accumulates speed instead of trying to slam your spin into conformity with the seatback, even when you’re launching it to 100km/h.

The engine can be either a surprisingly quiet and comfortable companion or a seriously loud and cranky supercar V10, depending on whether you’re in the standard or the Sport modes. Sport tightens up the behaviour of the dual-clutch transmission, too, though it’s sometimes too tight. There can be light-throttle jerkiness when it moves off in Sport and when it shifts at less than full aggro.

And when it’s loud, it’s lyrical. Its noise builds beautifully, wandering through extreme depths at middling revs to a high-rev howl and then a barrel-chested bellow in the stretch to the redline. It just never finds a bit of rev range where it really, frighteningly, thumps you forward. It grows and grows and you start to complain that it doesn’t feel quick enough and you look down to find yourself at 250km/h with just a quarter throttle. Oops.

But when it’s driven quickly, it all comes together so seamlessly that there’s just no drama or theatre anywhere.

Anybody can drive this car quickly with a quick swallow of brave pills to accommodate its stratospheric ultimate grip levels. It won’t bite when you slip beyond them and it won’t hurt when you make a mistake.

The all-wheel drive system makes sure no Newton goes unutilised and no corner exit gets tricker than the driver can manage, even if it adds weight and dulls the car’s responses in some critical areas, like smooth, high-speed corners. It even has the indecency to be comfortable in most situations as it devours miles with an elegance not matched in the Gallardo it’s based around.

The only genuine shortcoming is a steering ratio that feels too slow for the crispness of the chassis’ fixed-rate springs and dampers.

Well, that and it’s frighteningly expensive for a car in the last months of its life, fitted with a fancy-pants pair of spotlights. But the fact only three of them will ever come here, all in blue, ensures extreme exclusivity.


2014 R8 LMX pricing and specifications:

Price: $440,000

Engine:
5.2-litre ten-cylinder petrol
Output: 419kW/540Nm
Transmission: Seven-speed dual-clutch
Fuel: 12.9L/100km (NEDC Combined)
CO2: 299g/km (NEDC Combined)
Safety Rating: TBA

What we liked: Not so much:
>> Brilliant white light show >> Only three coming
>> Stupendous stability and grip >> Last of the breed
>> Gorgeous trimming detail >> More speed than punch
Share this article
Written byMichael Taylor
See all articles
Our team of independent expert car reviewers and journalistsMeet the team
Expert rating
80/100
Engine, Drivetrain & Chassis
15/20
Price, Packaging & Practicality
7/20
Safety & Technology
20/20
Behind the Wheel
18/20
X-Factor
20/20
Stay up to dateBecome a carsales member and get the latest news, reviews and advice straight to your inbox.
Owner reviews for Audi R8 2014
Average rating 5.01 review
Disclaimer
Please see our Editorial Guidelines & Code of Ethics (including for more information about sponsored content and paid events). The information published on this website is of a general nature only and doesn’t consider your particular circumstances or needs.

If the price does not contain the notation that it is "Drive Away", the price may not include additional costs, such as stamp duty and other government charges.
Download the carsales app
    AppStoreDownloadGooglePlayDownload
    App Store and the Apple logo are trademarks of Apple Inc. Google Play and the Google Play logo are trademarks of Google LLC.
    © CAR Group Ltd 1999-2024
    In the spirit of reconciliation we acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of Country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their Elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.