By Nauman Farooq

Audi stunned the world a few years back when it debut the R8 coupe. This stunning machine looked like more like a concept car than a production car. Its styling certainly got the attention of the public, who always had seen Audi as perhaps playing second fiddle to brands like Mercedes-Benz and BMW.

Audi R8 Spyder

Not only did it look stunning, it had stunning performance too. When the R8 was originally launched, it was available with a 4.2-liter V8 that produced 420hp. A year later, an upgrade engine was available, the Lamborghini-sourced 5.2-liter V10. The hand-built V10 pumped the power upto 525hp (390 lb/ft of torque) and thus firmly established the R8 in the highly exclusive supercar category.

So much achieved in so little time, so one wonders where Audi could go next. The answer is to go topless.

Welcome everybody to the new Audi R8 Spyder 5.2 FSI quattro. This is an open-top version of the R8 V10 coupe (no V8 on offer with this version, yet), and by doing so, they managed to do something that was impossible to fathom, they made the R8 look even better.

From every angle, every single line, the R8 Spyder looks stunning. It looks good enough to make anyone look as attractive as Kim Kardashian.

It might have lost its trademark side-blade, but that just makes the design look cleaner.

The interior hasn’t changed at all, which is no bad thing. Only now people can see you more easily when you drop the top.

Thanks to its electronically operated power folding fabric roof, which also operates on the move at speeds upto 40 km/h, the R8 Spyder can let the sunshine in, in about 19-seconds flat.

It would take a lot less time to get this car to accelerate upto speed. 0-100 km/h is dealt with in 4.1 seconds, and its top speed of 313 km/h makes it one of the fastest convertibles ever made. These performance figures are nearly the same as that of its coupe sibling, despite the extra 216 kg’s of weight.

Like all R8’s, the Spyder version is available with either a six-speed manual gearbox, or their R-tronic paddle-shift gearbox, which disappointingly is just a single-clutch system, and not the dual-clutch system found in lesser Audi models.

Also like most Audi’s, the R8 Spyder comes standard with their famed quattro all-wheel drive system, however in the R8’s, this system is more biased towards the rear-wheels, to give it that supercar feel.

The R8 Spyder goes on sale this summer with prices starting at nearly $200,000.