Magus Cars India

I APPROACHED THE R8 Spyder as I’d approach my dream car. It’s gorgeous, dramatic, and bonkers-fast, The roof folds for summer. The roof comes up again for winter, and Quattro drive hooks all that power onto a slippery road. Being an R8, it’s both epic and ordinary in perfect combination. It’s quiet when you need it to be, noisy when you want it to be. It handles commuting and motorways as well as mountain passes. But it turns our it’s useless. Not bad. Just useless.

Which is strange because the original R8 coupe is one of the most useful supercars in history.You can have that coupe for thrills, and for every day. Bur there’s one crucial detail that hobbles the Spyder as an everyday car. Where an R8 coupe has a handy space behind the seats, in the Spyder that space is used to store the folded roof. All that remains is the from boot, which, as with all R8s, is the size of a lunchbox.

So while the Spyder is on paper a elatively trifling eight per cent, or £8,690 (Rs 5 lakh), more expensive than the coupe, in practice you’d also need to add the cost of forwarding your luggage.

Since as an R8 Spyder buyer you’ll need to be so financially well-upholstered, you’ll think nothing of forking our for two more cylinders. So Audi doesn’t give you the choice and the Spyder is, for the time being at least, available only with the VI 0 and not the V8. And standard all-LED headlamps, magnetic ride, Bang and Olufsen hi-fi, and (nifty detail this) Bluetooth phone microphones embedded in the seatbelt fabric so that - even at big speed roof-down - you can phone your man in the S3 and tell him where ro meet you with the fresh undies.

And what a time you’ll be having en route to the rendezvous. We’ve already written thousands of words on the subject of our near- boundless love for the R8 V10. And now here’s a convertible, with all the advantages it confers. A convertible is when you can’t go very fast and want to enjoy the agreeable scenery and weather. A convertible is also more dramatic- looking. The absence of a roof makes a low and wide car even lower and, in consequence, wider-looking. And you hear that engine all the better. Somewhere between a pair of TT RS straight-fives and a Formula One V 10, it’s a noise you just can’t get enough of.

There’s heaps of torque too, delivered so nonchalantly that at first it’s easy to miss how fast this car is. I kept shifting up at 6,000rpm. I had to remind myself to take it to 8,700. And in the region between those numbers, this thing is brutally fast. Oh yes, it’s 100kg more than the coupe, so 0-100 takes just over four seconds rather than just under, bur roof-down the Spyder’s extra rush and noise makes it feel the more madly rapid.

The R-tronic single-clutch Happy-paddle gearbox is another £5,200 (Rs 3 lakh). However much money you’ve got, I urge you not to tick that box. The manual is simply delicious, and doesn’t make silly decisions. The R-tronic does - for instance, it changes down automatically as you approach a stop. Now imagine you decide it’s time to go from third to second. If the moment you pull the paddle coincides with moment it decides to shift down anyway, your shift plus its shift combine to land you in first, and suddenly the car stands on its nose. Thunk. All the RIO’s grip and traction are there. You can go at face- bending rates, and the R8 helps
you out. Bur something here has been lost. The steering remains progressive and confident, but a viral portion of the coupe’s feedback and involvement has gone AWOL. It’s sorely missed. The engineers say it’s the extra weight that’s to blame.

There was always a Spyder in the R8 plan. So I’m surprised by this marginal loss of finesse. I’m also surprised that the heater isn’t more effective, and that the cockpit is actually pretty blustery at motorway speed - an MX-5 is far better in both respects. So I came away from this drive feeling that the Spyder was a mild disappointment. Sorry. But then I’d set it such a high bar. I wanted it to be more special than the basic R8 V8 manual, and while it is in some ways, in others it’s lost something. Bur you need to know two things to put that verdict in proper context. First I drove it on a day of relentlessly grey sky and cold wind. And secondly, I think that a basic R8 is already miraculously special.

IT’S GOT ONE OF THE BEST interiors in the business. What joy to sit here, gazing at the magically animated virtual instruments, or at the vents and clock sitting on the dash like a little bowl of fruit, the soft hides with their neatly plush stitching, the structural-looking wood, the dreamy blue illumination.

The sense of occasion, and yes, even of humour. Which is all very well, but cars are for driving. How about if it was as good moving as it is standing still?

Snap judgment says that idea is pure fantasy I just got picked up in one. Here in central Paris the traffic’s bad and there are three of us so I Hop into in the back. Within 50 yards I get irked. This is another of those big saloons where they’ve firmed up the ride because it’s supposed to be sporty. Idiotic, I’m thinking. If you want a sporting car, don’t buy a big saloon.

Still, while I’m back here, might as well make myself at home. There’s loads of room to stretch (it’s a long wheel base) and I’ve just jumped in from a journey on particularly chilly public transport. I set the bum- warmer to stun, wind up the temperature of the rear vents and jet them in my direction. The B&W stereo is beyond extraordinary. The rear seats caress my weary form, even though they aren’t actually very softly padded as they’re hollowed out to give plenty of headroom in this swoopy car. Parisians are staring gobsmacked at it, and peering in at me having made the understandable but incorrect deduction that I must really be someone.

As speed builds, I decide the ride isn’t such an issue. It never goes smooth, no, but neither does it get worse. More important, there’s no shake or shudder, barely any impact noise, no sharpness as it hits bumps or aftershocks when they’re passed.

And let’s cut to the chase here. The reward for this controlled tautness is that this Jag, big though it is, behaves remarkably like a not-big car. Out of the city I’ve taken to the wheel. And it’s now spearing down a decidedly difficult stretch of road. The camber is uneven and the surface has been patched-up more often than a footballers marriage.

The Jag doesn’t care. It stays level, and there’s no fight from the steering. As the road starts to curve and then twist and then corkscrew and then hairpin, the car just stays with it. When big cars try to be sporty, usually this is where it all goes to pieces. Some of them might have all sorts of fancy active suspensions that do keep them on the road all right, but things just go into lockdown: harsh damping and shuddering bodywork and a burgeoning sense of the absurdity of it all. The X] on the other hand stays fluent and agile. It feels all perfectly natural, like it’s not pulling any special tricks- though it definitely must be.

Of course, if a car doesn’t weigh like a lardy limo, it’s less likely to drive like one. And, sure enough, the XJ is about 150kg lighter than the mainstream German opposition. Not to mention lighter than the smaller XF. Couple this pie-avoiding bodyweight with a rather magnificent set of engines and the good news keeps on coming. This is the naturally aspirated 5.O-litre V8, the one that came to the XJ and XF last year, with 385bhp and cam-profile switching and direct Injection and all sorts of techno goodness. It’s an imperial thing. The torque is marvelous, delivered good and early to the tune of a lovely pillowy V8 exhaust. Squeeze higher up the revs and it doesn’t flinch.It does 0-100 in 5.7 seconds, and overtaking is mighty. Still not enough? Well there’s a 51 0bhp supercharged one over and above that- the most excellent engine out the XFR and XJR

Then the 275bhp V6D. It’s staggeringly quiet for a diesel As smooth as that wonderful V8 petrol? Course not, doesn’t be daft. but given the fact it has torque to spare hits 100 in 6.4 sees, 250kph and makes !5kpl in the official Tests you can see why this’ll be The one everyone buys.

We end this trip with a motorway haul and a return to the city centre, because with a car in this class these are fines one and two of the job description - hooning about in the countryside will, sadly, never be more than a delightful side project. At big, straight-line speed the XJ is at least as quiet as it needs to be, and has a lovely effortless subtlety to its steering that makes it easy to guide it almost subconsciously within its lane. In town you sure notice its bigness, but the swish progression of the throttle and brakes both help lubricate your way through the traffic.

So it’s easy to drive, slowly or ruddy quickly. But it doesn’t drive itself. This might be an advanced car - especially its engines, body construction and those cabin screens - but it faces opposition that fields lots of stuff it does without: active four-wheel steering and see-in-the-dark and steer-between-dotted-lines and brake- when-you-don’t-have-the-gumption-to. The Jag’s technology is there to serve you, not to replace you. Good grief it serves you well My snap judgment was wrong. The XJ is as brilliant going as it is stopped