Audi r8 Spyder

[PompeyReece]

boultons911 said:

Glad I read this thread, I'm in the market to buy an V10 R8 spyder and the "Lemon" mentioned in this thread was one of the cars I was planning to look at.
What was a journey I was very much looking forward to taking: hunting down and buying a dream car, is now a journey filled with dread after doing some due diligence research.
Buying an R8 is now a tricky proposition........I'm initially leaning towards a facelift model with the S-tronic box as I'm coming from a 981S boxster with PDK and I loved that, however the GEN 1 does seem to be a better looking car, from the front anyway in my opinion.
Problem is, if you have to pay cerca £80k for a good facelift one, that is getting within spitting distance in price to the new shape R8 spyder which now seems to be cerca £100K entry level.
I've been looking for a while now, seems a lot of cars aren't selling so hopefully it's a buyers market.

I live in Spain and am travelling back to the UK in a couple of weeks to buy a car.
Can anyone recommend the best place/person to get a PPI done on one of these cars as this now seems to be a prerequisite if buying one of these "landmine" cars with many cars being listed with low miles and £14000 spent at dealers.....mag ride, clutches, AC units etc.
also many reports of audi warranty not covering the mag ride as considered as a consumable.

I'm still not sure which model I am going to go for....I'm a cash buyer which hopefully will help me........colour either black or white, leaning towards black but need to see some in the flesh to know for sure. If GEN 1 then think I'd prefer manual, bit of heal n toe to hear that V10........or if facelift looks ok in the flesh compared to gen 1 then I'd go for that.....do like the diamond stitching.
My budget is about £75k...can stretch a bit further but want to leave a bit in the pot for an exhaust and remap.

There's a car just been listed on ebay: 2013 Audi R8 5.2 FSI V10 Spyder S Tronic Quattro 2dr
+ 1 OWNER CAR + FACELIFT MODEL - 15k miles £69,995.....the dealer is based in Bristol.....www.HighburyMotors.com.....I'm guessing its a sale or return car as the dealer doesn't seem to be high end style without sounding like a @@@@

Any thoughts fellow petrol heads?

Firstly don't let the scare stories put you off. Generally owners only post about issues, very rarely do you see a thread entitled "few years owning an R8 and it's been problem free". These are reliable cars, especially in the supercar world, but you need to buy with common sense.

Regarding your points:

1. Winter is a better time to buy yes although no one can predict the future. White and black models demand a premium so expect less haggling space vs. a silver car which seems the least appealing.
2. PPI - if you're close to Swindon then REPerformance might be able to help. If not, the RAC will perform a full inspection for £500 with 1 weeks notice.
3. If going Gen 1, you'll get a low mileage spyder for that money - best places to look are Autotrader and PistonHeads selling section
4. An exhaust and remap should cost you around £3,000-£4,000 so you're looking at a £70k car
5. Gearbox - all personal choice so recommend you try all of them. I have a manual and its sublime but they are rarer on newer cars so your choice would be more limited i.e. on Autotrader there are 3-4 times as many automatics vs manuals in your price range

[finnian1989]

pgwbell said:

Phone code is usually masked.

Anyone driven a V10 spyder who is around the 6 foot 3 inch tall mark - Will I fit in one :-)

I am 6,7” and going to go for it hopefully soon after trying a couple out. If worst comes to worst I will swap the seats for Recaro PP’s and mount them on ultra low rails if I can have some custome made.

[UncleRob1]

Well I am the proud owner of a mauve purple v10 spyder as of Friday next week. It’s in the pistonheads classifieds from sytner Tamworth. Lovely car in great condition as far as can be seen. Anyone know the plate? R888LMF?

[Nano2nd]

UncleRob1 said:

Well I am the proud owner of a mauve purple v10 spyder as of Friday next week. It’s in the pistonheads classifieds from sytner Tamworth. Lovely car in great condition as far as can be seen. Anyone know the plate? R888LMF?

looks nice i also bought mine from Sytner Select but in Warwick, have u done the deal yet?

[UncleRob1]

Nano2nd said:

looks nice i also bought mine from Sytner Select but in Warwick, have u done the deal yet?

Yes deal done. Traded in a ttrs. And I know the profit margins and they are small to say the least.

Sad I know, always said if life let me I would buy a purple r8. Still very shocked I could.

Loved the rtronic and brutal shift change. Must be a lot of pressure on the clutch plate. Feels more real than stronic though.

[PompeyReece]

UncleRob1 said:

Well I am the proud owner of a mauve purple v10 spyder as of Friday next week. It’s in the pistonheads classifieds from sytner Tamworth. Lovely car in great condition as far as can be seen. Anyone know the plate? R888LMF?

Have you had a PPI done?

I was going to buy a Sytner R8 and when I had the PPI done, I pulled out!

OK, very unlikely to be a dealer issue but unless you have bottomless pockets, always recommend a PPI. Generally reliable cars are R8’s but when they go wrong they are expensive to fix. For example, mag ride is know to fail etc. and that’s £1k per corner to fix!

[barriejames]

Well after near 6 months owning and starting this post I am pleased to say it still ticks every box unlike any other car I've owned. More importantly no issues at all apart from 2 rear tyres

[Nano2nd]

PompeyReece said:

Have you had a PPI done?

I was going to buy a Sytner R8 and when I had the PPI done, I pulled out!

out of interest what were the issues? would they have not been picked up via the warranty?

[PompeyReece]

Nano2nd said:

PompeyReece said:

Have you had a PPI done?

I was going to buy a Sytner R8 and when I had the PPI done, I pulled out!

out of interest what were the issues? would they have not been picked up via the warranty?

The issues were as long as your arm:

- Leaking steering wheel column
- Diagnostics picked up errors with the rear fog light and an electrical side mirror
- 50p sized chips in the alloys (despite being told by the salesman "it's one of the best examples I've seen"
- Right hand side had been resprayed
- Cracked tyres
- Notchy gearbox
- Car pulled to the right when braking

There were other things too so I just pulled out - didn't like being lied to and the deal felt wrong.

The funny thing is the car was re-advertised then disappeared, a few weeks/month later it re-appeared on another dealer's website for sale at £4k more than I was going to buy it. My guess is my report highlighted a load of things they were unaware of and so sold it via an auction and the new buyer had a lot of the stuff fixed, hence the price premium.

What's even funnier - when I looked 2 weeks ago, the car was still for sale at the same (second) dealer some 18 months after I looked at it.

Hence my "always get a PPI" mantra and don't trust the "it's passed a 53,000 point check" crap

[Pioneer]

UncleRob1 said:

Yes deal done. Traded in a ttrs. And I know the profit margins and they are small to say the least.

Sad I know, always said if life let me I would buy a purple r8. Still very shocked I could.

Loved the rtronic and brutal shift change. Must be a lot of pressure on the clutch plate. Feels more real than stronic though.

I pulled out as well. Has about 9 owners, correct?

[UncleRob1]

Pioneer said:

I pulled out as well. Has about 9 owners, correct?

Why did you pull out?

[Pioneer]

Was going to be for the Wife and she only keeps a car for about 2 years or so. Discussed with a few Audi contacts more knowledgeable than me and us being the 10th owner would have made it very hard to sell on unless we priced it incredibly low. You expect more owners than normal on this type of car but at 9 owners already I guess that's the reason it's at BMW rather than Audi. Car was not cheap enough imo to reflect that and at the time there were better cars for less elsewhere. If it's a keeper then would be worth it I suppose if priced right and that's the colour you've been after. I would be very careful with prep though, esp if they're doing it onsite. BMW and Audi's R8 prep is different. Audi will even replace the safety belt clasp protectors, can't imagine BMW doing that with a non-brand PX let alone checking the mag, clutch wear etc.

Edited by Pioneer on Friday 11th May 15:51

[barriejames]

I got into a manual v10 spyder after thinking what I could buy that looks great drives great and won't lose a packet. There are not many cars around 50k you can say that about my e class before that dropped 10k in just over a year

[BlackR8]

great choice.

[KDC-NZ]

Great choice and very interesting reading about the ordeal you had to get one.

Looks like the red car you brought was a good deal and importantly, an easy deal. The best deals usually are.

Reading PH recently I don’t understand how your dealers get away with making it so hard to do business with them!

[barriejames]

Very true I'm just going out now for a spin in it. You're right I just but off people for me it's as important as the car. The guy I got it off didn't try and hide a thing and to be honest it was loose change for him I think he spent it in Christmas!! You can haggle and moan or just go with your gut instinct and do the deal if it all checks out. Ther3 us nothing this side of 150k i like more do for me it's no brainer

[barriejames]

barriejames said:

Very true I'm just going out now for a spin in it. You're right I just buy off people for me it's as important as the car. The guy I got it off didn't try and hide a thing and to be honest it was loose change for him I think he spent it on Christmas!! You can haggle and moan or just go with your gut instinct and do the deal if it all checks out. There I
s nothing this side of 150k i like more do for me it's no brainer