For Audi, long thought of in the U.S. as a builder of highly engineered but slightly bland sedans, the R8 is an aggressive image changer. "Cars like the R8 will help redefine Audi's image in the U.S," Martin Winterkorn, the new head of the VW Group (Audi's parent company) told me. "My target is to sell 200,000 vehicles here within five or six years." (Last year Audi sold 90,116 cars in America, only 10 percent of its global sales.)
The Audi guys have been trying to build a sports car for 25 years - this has been a long wait," Winterkorn told me as he flogged the R8 around the track. I asked him, yelling to be heard over the engine's snarl, what impressed him most about the car. "That anyone can drive it" - he glanced at me - "even a woman." If Audi wants to conquer America, it had better get a mindset adjustment: Next time, Herr Doktor, I'll drive.
Winterkorn and Rupert Stadler, Audi's new boss, confirmed that the next step for the R8 is to get a bigger engine. Eventually, says Winterkorn, it will share a new platform with Lamborghini, Bentley and (hooray!) Bugatti. But for now, Audi can rest easy in the knowledge that it has created a classic.
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