IR8it

gk1

superswiss

Yeah seems a bit odd that you bought a car you didn't obviously do your homework on. The V10 in the R8 is a high-revving naturally aspirated engine. That's a very different engine philosophy from a turbo charged engine in the other cars you mentioned. Turbo charged engines make their torque and power relatively low in the rev range, so they "feel" fast because they go like a canon down low. The R8 is a Motorsport style car. You need to rev it to get going. Peak torque is at 6500 rpm. Drive it between 6000 and 8500 rpm and your pants will fly off. A high-revving NA engine is more about horsepower than torque and it makes power via revs, so the higher you rev it the more power it makes, whereas turbo charged engines generally make their power in the low to mid range and taper off at the top. The benefit of an NA engine is a super responsive crisp throttle with no lag and a fast free revving engine.

Kris Hansen

Torque Vs. Horsepower. Keep your foot planted, and let it rev.

superswiss

BTW, below are a couple of good videos on this subject and they explain why ultimately horsepower determines how fast a car accelerates and not torque. He has other similar videos on the subject. This is often misunderstood unless you paid attention in physics class, and the important role gearing plays is often forgotten in these discussions. Torque gets the car moving and the more low end torque a car has the faster it "feels". I'm putting that in quotes, because that feeling doesn't actually translate into a higher rate of acceleration if it doesn't have the power to sustain it. Accelerating a car requires work, and power as you should remember from physics class is a number that indicates how much work can be performed in a given time. So, the higher the power, the more work can be performed in the same amount of time and the faster the car accelerates. At the end of the day a 600hp/400lbft car is faster than a 400hp/600lbft car, assuming they weigh about the same. The R8 V10 Plus is a very fast car if driven correctly as I can attest from personal experience. But if you wanna be fast off the line you'll have to use launch control, which will drop the clutch from a very high rpm in order to produce max torque to get off the line as fast as possible. It might be uncomfortably high if you've never done it before, but letting the engine scream is what the R8 and similar cars with NA high-revving engines are all about.

L0U

Eball77

I picked up a V10 plus last week and initially thought the same thing.... I noticed that you just have to kick the throttle all the way down to really feel the power and keep the rpms high. The turbo comments make perfect sense.

A42B

In addition... the experience of ripping a NA motor to 8k RPM is all the fun. Where turbo motors lack the aural excitement.