It was one of those weeks.
A week when I continually bumped into megalomaniacs, halfwits and barely sentient beings who proved that we didn’t have to worry about thickies out-breeding the intelligent okes in the not-too-distant future because they’ve already done the deed.
That’s a rich statement coming from me who’s not the most pungent chilli in the curry. In my opinion my intelligence is like Halley’s Comet — I suspect I’ve experienced it once in this lifetime, but like everyone else I’m too lazy to Google whether it (the comet and my IQ) might show up again anytime soon.
It was a week when I was wishing the Mayans had got it all wrong and that the end of days wasn’t going to happen in 2012, but rather in 2009 because a cataclysmic end of the world as we know it wasn’t such a bad idea. There was no justice left on this third rock from the sun and I was happy with the notion of cockroaches being the only survivors of the predictable fallout because I’m pretty sure they would evolve into better primates than we have.
As my favourite fictitious and fashionably nihilistic author — Hank Moody — said to a young-un warning him about the grave effects of his nicotine habit: “Honey, life will kill you.”
It was a kak week.
But then I arrived home, opened my dusty garage door and there was this conceited Audi R8 V10 staring menacingly at me, daring me to find a reason not to start it up, not to get butterflies in my belly when the engine growled to life and not to wrap my sweaty palms around the steering wheel and attempt to put a dent in the space-time continuum. It was as if I had arrived home to find that magical elves (otherwise known as Mum) had baked a perfect chocolate cake made up of moist, spongy layers smothered in old-fashioned, rich dark-chocolate icing with just a smidgeon of caramel and left it on the kitchen table just for me. Do you know anyone who wouldn’t dive nose-first into the promise of either a chocolatey heaven or the equivalent of motoring nirvana? I don’t.
There’s just no way you can look at this car and not want it to wrap its unabashed machismo around you, even though you’ve never been a fan of that most awful of words — beefcake. It’s the antithesis to all those puerile men’s deodorant ads — which try so hard to convince consumers of the effect the deos will have on the fairer sex — because it doesn’t have to do anything to make you a slave to its rhythm.
As an everyday car, the two-seater R8 isn’t as difficult to tame as other supercars. Yes, the clutch starts to feel a little heavy after you’ve spent 20 minutes in morning traffic, but when you hit an open patch of freeway and you hurtle from 0 to 100kph in 3,9s you quickly forget any quirks the car might have.
And the entertainment value is second to none, especially when senior colleagues are silly enough to ask for a test drive. Associate editor Charlotte Bauer was being unusually brave until I let rip and then with arms flailing wildly (it really is cruel that there are no grab handles in this car), she interrupted the spine-tingling V10 howl with: “So where’s that religious Hindi music then?” and “My God I’ve never been so happy to see traffic before in my life.”
I did what I could to assuage her fear with helpful reminders such as: “Don’t forget to breathe, I don’t want you fainting in this car” and “if you throw up before you open your window, you’re paying for the very expensive valet it’s going to need”.
You have to be cruel to be kind, right? Well, she didn’t fire me so it couldn’t have been all that bad.
I could appreciate exactly what Bauer had experienced because Audi Driving Experience chief instructor Mark Allison had been equally cruel to me during Audi’s centenary celebrations when he took me around the Kyalami raceway in the V10 R8.
You never really understand the effects of G-force until you’re whipped around a track by a former racing driver in a supercar he’s obviously driven a few times.
Thankfully Allison let me drive first and it was during these laps that he was uncharacteristically critical of my skills or lack thereof.
To be fair I had berated him for being too diplomatic throughout the day so it made sense that he would be most vocal when I was driving an almost R2-million car he was clearly attached to.
Taking the R8 around a track made sense to me — it was an environment where I could appreciate how well it handled, how composed it was under pressure, how lightning fast it was and how easy it was to drive, but I’m not sure how much sense it would make on our roads where there are no unrestricted patches of tar on which you can have some fun.
Then again, given that it proved to be just the panacea I so desperately needed, maybe it does have a place on any road, provided you offset the amount of fuel you’ll be burning by becoming a vegetarian, as I averaged a staggering 28 litres per 100km.
Fast fact
Model: Audi V10 R8 manual
Engine: 5.2-litre V10
Price: R 1 950 000
Tech: 386kW and 530Nm
Top Speed: 316kph, 0-100kph in 3.9s
Claimed consumption: 14 litres/100km