Battle Of The Sports Cars Audi R8 Vs Caterham Svr 200

The Age

Saturday January 26, 2008

Steve Colquhoun

THEY'RE TWO OF THE SPORTIEST CARS MONEY CAN BUY, YET THEY'RE TOTAL OPPOSITES. STEVE COLQUHOUN FINDS OUT WHICH ONE BEST DELIVERS DRIVING THRILLS.

AH, SPORTS cars. They're the ultimate automotive fantasy, promising the excitement and panache of a Monaco lifestyle; roaring away from rest, sweeping through the bends and responding instantly to the driver's deft skills, all the while seeking to draw envious stares from onlookers stuck on the footpaths of life.

Sports cars are, indeed, a hedonistic pursuit. And summer being the season of hedonism, we've snared two that come to the party from opposite directions. One, the $275,000 Audi R8, is a high-tech rocketship, packed with virtually every electronic system we can think of. The other, the $107,700 Caterham Seven SVR 200, a race car for the road, has virtually none.

What they have in common is two seats, seatbelts, steering wheel, windscreen wipers, a key and engine immobiliser, and 98 octane in the tank. And that's about it.

The Audi offers a starfighter-like list of pilot aids: launch control, robotic gearbox, paddle shifts, all-wheel drive, switchable suspension settings, traction control, stability control and smart anti-lock brakes, all packed into a 21st century aluminium space frame. And there's no small matter of a 309 kW 4.2-litre V8 positioned behind the cabin, shown off to the world below a glass hatch.

Then there's the creature comforts - including climate-control air-conditioning, power adjustment on seats, windows and mirrors, sat-nav, a Bang & Olufsen stereo, leather everywhere - so you and your glamorous companion can arrive quickly and unruffled.

And the Caterham? It's positively prehistoric. Doors? No. Windows? Er, no. There's no power steering, no power brakes, no air-conditioning and not even a radio.

But what it misses out on appointments it promises to deliver in raw thrills. Under the bonnet is a hand-built race engine by Cosworth, the company that powered Alan Jones to his formula one driver's championship. There's a close-ratio six-speed gearbox and a tiny but thick-rimmed Moto-Lita steering wheel.

And it weighs in like a dieting supermodel. Starting at 575 kg (680 kg as tested), the car weighs little more than a third of the 1565 kg Audi R8. And on the stats sheet it's faster to 100 km/h than the Audi: a claimed 3.9 seconds versus 4.6 seconds.

Which one of these two very different beasts best fills the sports-car dream? Unfortunately, the bean counters wouldn't stump up for tickets to Monaco. So instead we took them for a drive in country Victoria, wishing all the while we were millionaires in the hills behind Monte Carlo.

THE AUDI

Getting settled in the Audi is easy: the push-button motors on the seat whir you into a perfect relationship to the adjustable steering wheel and the two pedals - brake and accelerator. There's no clutch pedal, as manual gear changes are looked after by putting the car in "D" for drive or by clicking the steering wheel paddles to go up and down the gears.

Left to its own devices, though, moving way from rest is a jerky affair, with an odd resistance to overcome that makes standing starts, low-speed manoeuvring and reversing annoyingly difficult to execute smoothly. It feels as if the brake pads just won't release on the discs. Once you're rolling, get ready to take in the rapidly changing view through the windscreen.

In the R8, there's no part of the car visible forward of the windscreen. It's easy to fool yourself you're really piloting a space shuttle.

The big V8 powerplant amidships does most of its work with a muted whine from behind a glass partition separating it from the cabin, rising to an aurally pleasing howl only under heavy right-foot provocation or some deft downshifting fingerwork with the steering wheel-mounted paddles.

Plant the right foot and unleash 430 Nm as it piles on speed in a civilised way: there's no neck-snapping jolts of brute power, more a hand-of-God push that passengers will marvel at. The speedo is marked to 350 km/h and the car will certainly reach 301 km/h, Audi says.

The car steers where pointed. What it all means is that your average weekend warrior can pick up the R8 by the scruff and place it virtually anywhere he wants on the road, at any speed legally allowable, every time. Just pick your apex and hit it, with time left over to look down the road at the next corner, and the one after that. It would almost get boring if it didn't make you feel so good about yourself.

The massive brakes (380 mm front discs clamped by eight-piston calipers, 356 mm discs/four-piston rears) wash off speed faster than an Aussie bowler losing his run-up, and it'll do it time after time. With all-paw grip on wide Pirelli P Zeros, it makes for one of the most reassuring cars you can drive in any weather or road condition.

THE CATERHAM

Leave it to the Caterham to take your self-esteem down a peg or three. Not unlike climbing out of an F/A-18 Hornet and into a Spitfire, you substitute the R8's power-everything for the Caterham's power-nothing. Even its indicator switch is a manual toggle that could have come from a Dick Smith catalogue. It has to be flicked to the right and left, requiring the driver to remember to switch it off after a turn.

There's something very primal about "slipping" behind the wheel of the Caterham, even if the doorless configuration does require an act of contortionism to do so. It's difficult to get in and sit down without first standing on the seat.

The coffin driving position sandwiches you between the transmission tunnel and the side of the car's body; knees just clear of the steering wheel.

The side mirrors require manual adjustment by a passenger.

There's a trick, too, to starting the Caterham, involving finding the hidden key-slot and fumbling with the immobiliser. It takes some practice not to make it look like you're hot-wiring the car.

The three pedals are close-set, so be warned: don't nudge the accelerator as you twist the ignition key - you'll send the engine roaring off the rev limiter from the get-go, such is its rev-happy nature. Oh well, at least that's the first fright out of the way.

The free-spinning engine owes a lot of its character to a lightweight flywheel, which means there's virtually no delay in responding to the accelerator, whether mashing down or lifting off.

First time away, the hair-trigger response means you're more than likely going to bunny-hop the car a few hundred metres before getting into the swing of things.

Most significantly, the Caterham's six-speed, H-pattern, manual gearbox is guaranteed to magnify any mistake you make tenfold. It's a lesson in trial and error, but when you finally figure out what it likes, your reward is a smugness that exceeds anything on offer in the R8. Slot home the first five short-throw gears in rapid succession without significant incident, and revel in a top cog that will unleash the racing Cosworth Duratec and launch you with exhilarating elasticity from 60 km/h to the speed limit.

Driving the Caterham is such a raw, even brutal, experience, that 60 km/h feels like 100, and 100 km/h feels like much, much more.

Seated only centimetres off the ground and with no roof, no sound-deadening and barely-there rear suspension, you are assaulted by engine, transmission and road noise and buffeted by every lump and bump in the road surface.

The brakes, though, barely feel up to the task, in spite of the Caterham's magnificent lack of mass. They need a hard shove, just like in the Flintstones cartoons.

However, master the tricky gearbox and its finicky clutch, the narrow pedal confines and the just-there brakes and you can attack corners with vigour - and this is where the Caterham hits its stride.

Bilstein dampers equipped with Eibach springs soak up punishment coming through the front wheels, while the Avon semi-track tyres, inflated to just 18 psi (about half

the pressure of a regular sedan), grip magnificently. You will be unable to wipe the silly grin from your face.

You will want to like the sun, too, because the rag roof is a slow, fiddly operation.

At least there are curtain panels that slot onto the windscreen frame to keep the air turbulence in the cabin to merely cyclonic conditions. But the top rails of the windscreen and the side windows are exactly the height to create an annoying blind spot for taller drivers.

A dodgy fuel gauge that left us high and dry on the trip home and some questionable kilometre readings are a cautionary tale for prospective buyers not to put too much store in the accuracy of the Caterham's rudimentary gauges.

After experiencing the Caterham's raw heroics, getting back into the R8 suddenly felt clinical and detached. The Audi is everything you would ever want from a sports car, and more, but that is also its downfall. It does everything, leaving its pilot with little to do but enjoy the scenery.The verdictSo what will it be: the suave and sophisticated Audi R8 or the raw purity of the Caterham?

Frankly, neither works particularly well as a daily driver. The difficulty in launching them - the R8 with its irritating inertia issue and the hoppy Caterham - makes them irritating for everyday use.

The low-slung, wide-hipped R8 is also tricky to park, and the doorless, roofless Caterham, while boasting better visibility, has all sorts of issues with security and weather protection if parked anywhere other than your garage.

But which would we take as our companion on our Monaco fantasy drive?

Some will deem the R8's cosseted cabin, ease of operation and look-at-moi profile as all the reason they need to splash a little more than a lazy quarter-million on the latest addition to their garage. The R8 pulled more jaw-dropping reactions from onlookers than anything we've ever driven.

The Caterham, though, is a unique experience: a race car that you can road register, a car that demands to be driven and rewards competence like few others.

If you're more about the drive and less about the destination, the Caterham is a unique and unadulterated weekend fun machine.

If you chose the Caterham over the R8, you could use the money you saved to buy an Audi S5 ($131,900), a car that's far easier to live with on a day-to-day basis than the R8.

But while the roads of country Gippsland are a world away from Monaco, if it's the ethereal ego trip of ice-cool supermodels, Dom Perignon and mega yachts you dream of, well, there's really only one choice, isn't there?

THE CATERHAM SEVEN STORY

IF THE Caterham Seven SVR 200 looks old-school, that's because it is.

The Seven - originally known as the Lotus Seven and designed by Lotus founder Colin Chapman - celebrated its 50th anniversary last year and is referred to by the company as a "race car for the road".

The name change occurred in 1973 when Lotus announced it would discontinue production of the Seven. Graham Nearn, who owned a Lotus dealership in the British township of Caterham, successfully bought the rights to continue its production.

The Caterham Seven is constructed of aluminium sheet attached to a tubular-steel chassis, achieving its great performance from its light weight rather than a large engine. The front-engined, rear-wheel-drive car typically housed engines of 1.4 to 1.8 litres, although the SVR 200 tested by Drive has a more powerful and slightly heavier, 2.3-litre, Cosworth-Ford Duratec racing engine fitted.

About 700 competitors in 11 countries race in Caterham-only championships, making it one of the most popular racing cars in the world.

© 2008 The Age

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