First Drive: Audi R8 Spyder

The Audi R8 was arguably the definitive supercar design of the last decade. A brilliant, thrusting sum of its components parts, the car is a proportional masterpiece of automotive styling. Every individual element of the body is so well reconciled with the next that removing that elegant teardrop of a roof was always going to be problematic when the time came to build a convertible.

The R8 Spyder was unveiled at the Frankfurt show last year and instantly proclaimed a triumph. But viewing the car under the harsh grey light of the real world, it's difficult not to conclude that with the distinctive two-tone sideblades gone from in front of the rear wheels the rakish drop top might have relinquished just a fraction of the coupe's visual presence.

Hunker in to the familiar interior and it's a similar story out on the road. Depriving the R8 of its roof means forfeiting some of the car's rigidity. The only way to solve this is to strengthen what's left, and inevitably this leads to some weight-gain. The Spyder might have only put on a 100kg, but that is sufficient to slightly tarnish the standard R8's exemplary handling. The convertible can't quite reproduce the coupe's agility at pace, and challenging roads cannot be driven with such effortless fluidity.