2017 Audi R8 V10 Plus vs  2016 McLaren 570S, 2017 Porsche 911 Turbo S
Channel: Auto Today
Date: 2017-01-05

2017 Audi R8 V10 Plus vs  2016 McLaren 570S, 2017 Porsche 911 Turbo S. There is no acceptable way to begin a story about 500-plus-horsepower, $200,000 sports cars and include in the first sentence a reference to that class of quasi-­station-wagon family movers known as crossovers.

But hang on. As in the pseudo-off-roader market, sports cars now populate so many strata of the market that they require increasingly specific monikers and modifiers to sort them all out. Used to be, you had your sports cars and your ­regular cars. Then came the supercars, those increasingly outrageous-looking, typically mid-engined wedge- or arrow-shaped things. But why stop there? Why not create something straight out of the world of aerospace and require that we add an even more breathless label? Thus was born the hypercar. And so, in between the everyman Mazda MX-5 Miata and the racetrack-bound $3 million Ferrari FXX K, carmakers have rushed to fill every price and performance gap in the fun-car market.

Invading NASCAR country in an alien trio of candy-colored supercars. Everyone knew what the Porsche was. Only one man recognized the Vector.
About three-quarters up the performance scale sits one of the most competitive sectors: the roughly $200,000 class we’re now referring to as “junior supercars.” For that not-inconsiderable amount, a buyer can expect a dash, or more, of carbon fiber, 550 horsepower or more, an engine typically mounted behind the occupants, a zero-to-60-mph time of less than three seconds, a top speed just above 200 mph, and a dual-clutch automatic gearbox. And these little siblings to the Ferrari 488GTB and McLaren 650S represent a market bull’s-eye in that they are within reach of the merely very rich but offer the crowd-wowing looks and perform­ance close to the likes of Bugatti, the Ferrari LaFerrari, and the McLaren P1 for about a tenth of the price.

First in the fight is the second-generation Audi R8. Subtly redesigned and stripped of its optional manual transmission, the R8 is the sister car to the one-step-up Lamborghini Huracán, with which it shares much of its carbon-and-aluminum structure, all-wheel-drive system, and high-revving midships-mounted V-10. Our test car wears the Plus suffix, meaning its 5.2-liter V-10 pumps out 610 horsepower (70 more than the standard R8 V-10) and it’s lashed with a hefty dose of carbon molecules, including a fixed carbon-fiber rear wing, various carbon accents, and carbon-ceramic brake rotors. At a base price of $192,450 (including a $1300 gas-guzzler tax), the R8 V-10 Plus represents a roughly $40,000 cost savings compared with the Huracán LP610-4. Audi plumped our test vehicle’s price to $202,750 with the addition of an upgraded Bang & Olufsen audio system ($1900), full-leather interior with contrasting stitching on the 18-way adjustable power seats ($5000), and 20-inch wheels ($1500), along with a couple other optional doodads.

The R8 may constitute a value compared with the Huracán, but Porsche’s freshly tweaked 911 Turbo S undercuts the Audi’s as-tested price by some $10,000, thanks to its lower starting point and an option load that’s unusually light by Porsche stand­ards. The updates for this so-called 991.2 version of the Turbo S are mostly detail changes, although it carries an additional 20 horsepower versus the last Turbo S, thanks to larger turbocharger impellers and reworked intake ports. The 911 Turbo S represents a different approach to the $200,000 sports-car conundrum, in that it’s the highest expression of road-focused performance for its model line—a line that includes a base model roughly $100,000 less expensive. It also carries two vestigial rear seats and looks, well, decidedly large and pedestrian in this company.

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