Verdict 8/10
PRICE: £49,500-51,200 Top speed: 155mph 0-60MPH: 4.9secs ECONOMY: 20.9mpg (20.6mpg auto) CO2: 320g/km (324g/km auto)
ENGINE TYPE, CC: 6,162cc V8 (petrol) POWER: 425bhp TORQUE: 406lb-ft GEARBOX: Six-speed manual and six-speed auto
a whopping £435 a year, which makes for a real running-costs double whammy. Yet despite the massive hit your wallet
will take, in some ways, the VXR8 is actually a practical car. The cabin is spacious and five adults could ride in it without too much trouble, and the boot is big enough to take all their luggage. It’s also well-appointed: the two bucket seats up front and the rear bench are upholstered in leather, and the redesigned dashboard features a new instrument cluster, new switchgear and a centre stack that incorporates the Enhanced Driver Interface (EDI), which supplies 10 pages of scrollable data from the car’s on-board computer to the 5” inch screen. Some of them are considerably more than entertaining than anything you might see in
Neighbours or Home and Away. There are also plenty of toys for the VXR8-driving boys (because, frankly, you won’t get many Sheilas driving this car: they’ve got more sense). These include a launch control function that allows the car to accelerate from standstill at its maximum potential, using the ESC unit to control the engine: just dump the clutch and the VXR8 does a credible impression of a quickie from Dennis Lillee or Glenn McGrath. Throw in features such as a rear parking camera, tyre pressure monitor, Aux-in/USB inputs, iPod support and Bluetooth and you have pretty much everything you’d expect to find in a 50-grand car. Which is the sting in the tail. When the last VXR8 was launched in 2007,
you could pick one up for £35,000, which was an absolute steal when you compared it to the likes of the BMW M3 of Mercedes-Benz C 63 AMG, European performance cars that were its nearest rivals. But the strength of the Australian dollar means the price has increased to a point where there’s not a great deal of difference between this interloper and the established titans. What the VXR8 does have in its favour,
though, is that with only 25 being imported into the UK every year, they’ll be rarer than ducks in the outback, which means owners will certainly stand out from the crowd. Partly because of the noisy V8, but mostly because of the permanent grins on their faces that come from driving something this much fun.
April / May 2011 | driving
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