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You remember your Aunt Agatha, don't you? Purple rinse, lipsticky teeth, fledgling beard - that one. Well, she's just left you £76,725 in her will. And since you're not one to ignore a rather heavy handed hint from the forces of destiny, you'll spend it on an - ONLY REGISTERED AND ACTIVATED USERS CAN SEE ALL LINKS - CLICK HERE TO REGISTER.

So what exactly do you get for your £76,725? Well, first of all you get to wait. Audi UK has been allocated 450 R8s this year, with deliveries starting in July, and 750 in 2008. But as it has more than 1,000 customers on the waiting list, any orders placed now aren't likely to be fulfilled before 2009. (The UK will actually be getting a disproportionate number of R8s: only 3,000 will be built per year, largely by hand, at a rate of about 20 a day.)

That will give you plenty of time to read the brochure, and if you're anything like the other people buying R8s you'll find it hard to resist some of the options. The average price of the cars being ordered now is around £90,000.

And then, when you're old and grey, you get your car. And, by crikey, it will make you young and virile and athletic and cool and everything you ever wanted to be. No, really, that's what it feels like - that's how good it is. Even those whose tastes are a little more hardcore admit that it's a splendid thing. And it's bang on target for the type of driver who's a bit intimidated by Ferraris, a bit uncertain about the - ONLY REGISTERED AND ACTIVATED USERS CAN SEE ALL LINKS - CLICK HERE TO REGISTER's image and is, in any case, rather keen on the idea of a car that merges - ONLY REGISTERED AND ACTIVATED USERS CAN SEE ALL LINKS - CLICK HERE TO REGISTER with - ONLY REGISTERED AND ACTIVATED USERS CAN SEE ALL LINKS - CLICK HERE TO REGISTER.

A lot of supercars, high-end sports cars and GTs require you to re-learn how to drive. You have to develop new muscles, so you can operate the clutch and gear lever. You have to acquire a sixth sense, so you can determine the whereabouts of the other traffic that you suspect is there but you can't see because of the thick pillars. You have to get your legs broken and re-set at a kinky new angle, so you can reach the offset pedals. You have to become very good at packing your possessions into small bags. And you have to become a yoga master, to handle the frustration caused by being in a fast, powerful car on roads better suited to a - ONLY REGISTERED AND ACTIVATED USERS CAN SEE ALL LINKS - CLICK HERE TO REGISTER.

The R8 is guilty on a couple of these charges, but certainly not all. The view out is limited. The boot and the space behind the seats are small, the glovebox is very small and the door pockets are tiny. But where it matters, the R8 is a remarkably usable vehicle. Its 4.2-litre V8 engine revs high, but is happy to trundle along at 2,000rpm, and the clutch action on the manual version is no harder to work than our - ONLY REGISTERED AND ACTIVATED USERS CAN SEE ALL LINKS - CLICK HERE TO REGISTER.

It's also a fantastically comfortable car. The Gallardo that sired the R8 is a reasonably roomy thing, but the Audi has a couple of inches more headroom, which makes getting in and out easier, and the seats have been designed to welcome the wider driver.

And when you drive it, the R8 feels like its mission in life is to make you happy, not to test your virility or catch you out. That's not to say, however, that it wraps you up in the electronic equivalent of cotton wool; yes there is a stability control system, but it's set up to let you have some fun and will only intervene when there is some serious danger of your becoming intimate with a hedge or lamp post.

If you've driven any Audi built in the last decade, from the A2 to the Allroad, you'll be on familiar turf with the R8: everything is where it should be, and moves how you'd expect, and feels like it's been checked by the same quality controllers. But what no previous Audi will have prepared you for - not the £70,000 S8, not the RS4 that shares its engine with the R8 - is its remarkable combination of ride, handling and performance. It's all the good bits about Audi and none of the bad bits.

The four-wheel drive system has a clear bias to the rear, with the - ONLY REGISTERED AND ACTIVATED USERS CAN SEE ALL LINKS - CLICK HERE TO REGISTER technology only making itself known when you're pushing your luck. Even the best of the recent - ONLY REGISTERED AND ACTIVATED USERS CAN SEE ALL LINKS - CLICK HERE TO REGISTER-equipped Audis have tended to feel a little awkward compared to rear-drive rivals, but it seems Audi has learned something from Lamborghini about how best to harness the potential of four-wheel drive in a high-performance car.

The manual gearbox is a revelation too. Audi's manuals have got better, but they've been eclipsed by the - ONLY REGISTERED AND ACTIVATED USERS CAN SEE ALL LINKS - CLICK HERE TO REGISTER - ONLY REGISTERED AND ACTIVATED USERS CAN SEE ALL LINKS - CLICK HERE TO REGISTER system offered on much of the range. On the R8, however, the R-tronic automatic plays second fiddle to the standard - and cheaper - manual, which is precise and positive, and employs a metal gate that's straight out of the Supercar Book for Boys. The auto, to its credit, does kick down with thrilling brutality, but you can replicate that yourself with a well timed change using the manual 'box.

So much acceleration, such precise steering, such a stiff body, so much grip - and the ride is superb too. You can fiddle around with the settings, but basically it's superb from the get-go. You always feel connected to the road, yet there's no jarring or rattling. A brief passenger ride on the Paul Ricard circuit in the South of France confirmed that its soul is that of a road car, not a race car, but an unusually stiff and composed road car.

Hitting the track is a good way of finding out what it'll do, and seeing if you can get close to discovering the limits of the Audi's grip, but don't expect to see many R8s on trackdays. It takes its name from the racer that won Le Mans every year from 2000 to 2005, but it's too comfortable and refined to be mistaken for a track car. Maybe when - if - it gets the V10 engine from the Gallardo/S6/S8, or a diesel inspired by the current Le Mans car, the R10. We'll see.

It's a car you could use every day - although not for the weekly shop - but its main role is to be so good to drive that you'll drive it for the hell of it. But it's also a car that looks so stunning that you'll also stop for the hell of it, so that you can sit at a roadside cafe and admire the car, and watch other people admiring it. Maybe this wears off. It certainly didn't in our two days spent near Marseille masquerading as R8 owners.

While we sat there sipping our proper tourist-spec cafe au lait, passers-by would stop, backtrack, look at the engine through the clear cover, go around to the front to check the badge, peer through the side window to check out the speedo, go around to the other side when they realised it was a right-hand-drive car, then stand back and smile.

And on the move, we'd see drivers of A3s and Golfs and Sierras - in fact, drivers of nearly everything - winding down their windows to get an earful of the V8. It's not loud enough for some - not least Andrew Frankel, who wrote 4Car's - ONLY REGISTERED AND ACTIVATED USERS CAN SEE ALL LINKS - CLICK HERE TO REGISTER of the R8 in January - but there's a lot to be said for an engine that's quiet when you want it to be and loud only when you floor the throttle.

It is, after all, a car for successful grown-ups. If you're Audi's target buyer you're a man in your forties, in a household with a monthly income of £8,500, and you're also considering a - ONLY REGISTERED AND ACTIVATED USERS CAN SEE ALL LINKS - CLICK HERE TO REGISTER, a - ONLY REGISTERED AND ACTIVATED USERS CAN SEE ALL LINKS - CLICK HERE TO REGISTER, a - ONLY REGISTERED AND ACTIVATED USERS CAN SEE ALL LINKS - CLICK HERE TO REGISTER and an - ONLY REGISTERED AND ACTIVATED USERS CAN SEE ALL LINKS - CLICK HERE TO REGISTER. Or you've just had the good fortune to lose a relative whose memories of you were fonder than your memories of her. Either way, lucky you.

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