The future of the Audi R8 is a hot mess of rumors right now, but Audi has tried to gain back a little bit of control to tell the world the R8 as we know it will only available with a V10. There will be no V6 nonsense.
Nobody seems sure about what will happen after the current R8, maybe not even Audi.
Earlier this year, there were a couple of rumors and reports that Audi didn’t see a future for the R8 supercar after the recently-refreshed current generation of the car gets old. And then, around the same time as those rumors, another rumor claimed the R8 could get an unprecedented twin-turbo V6 model from the RS4.
At the time of the V6 rumor, Audi shot it down. And now they’ve shot it down again, via Car Throttle:
The updated R8 then landed a few weeks ago, with a conspicuous lack of V6. When talking to the R8’s project manager Bjorn Friedrich at the launch of the car this week, he confirmed that a V6 won’t be happening during this generation of R8 at all, and a V10 will remain its sole powertrain. “It’s the best engine for the car…We’ll stick to the V10,” he concluded.
So there you have it. No twin-turbo V6. Maybe no R8 at all after this refreshed one. Maybe that’s OK, considering Audi has now smothered attempts at an R8-based EV supercar twice. Maybe it’ll try again. Maybe not. There’s still Lamborghini.