Can I keep it, please?

2007 AUDI R8

- JAMES ELLIOTT

I'D HAD THE R8 about a month when a neighbour sauntered over and asked if I had won the lottery. Sitting on his drive at the time was a new Renault Zoe with a list price that would comfortably see him into an R8. Not as nice as this one, but a decent R8. And that is the beauty of this generation of Audi: it went into production 15 years ago and has aged so well that people just assume it is still a new car. Why shouldn't they? It still looks like one, it still drives like one and it still gets the reception of one wherever it goes. Please at least finish reading this before you start browsing.

For full disclosure, the original R8 is probably my favourite car of this millennium, especially the V8 with a manual gearbox, so when myself, my boss Steve Fowler and Audi PR man Johnny Burn hatched a plan to help the UK wing exercise some of its heritage fleet, my arm went up so quick I nearly dislocated my shoulder.

The car in question was a 2007 (T42 gen) manual 4.2 FSI V8, the one as far as I am concerned, with all the benefits of a Lamborghini Gallardo platform and none of its lairiness in styling or colouring. As you would expect from a company with a colour chart that resembles the Caran d'Ache graphite selection, it comes in a suitably sober and industrial palette of grey. But there is that two-tone 'side blade' that offends so many, but I think complements the main body colour perfectly.