World's Maddest 'Audi R8' Has A 750bhp C5 RS6 V8 And No Face

We love ourselves a ridiculous hill climb car here at CT, and today we bring you one that should blast away those January blues with a snarl of V8 anger. This is SB Racing’s ‘Audi R8’, those inverted commas are necessary as it has precious little to do with the road car it (mostly) looks like.

Under the skin, it has a bespoke structure combining a carbon fibre tub with a tubular space frame. And although that rough R8 shape is there, it has a radically different ‘open’ front end, making it seem as though the car has no face.

It looks suitably scary for the devilish noise belted out of the twin-exit exhaust, which does actually come from an Audi, albeit not an R8. It’s a twin-turbo 4.2-litre ‘BCY’ V8 pinched from the C5 RS6, here producing 750bhp. In a car weighing under a tonne, that’ll do nicely.

The mid-mounted V8 feeds power to the rear wheels via a six-speed Quaife sequential gearbox and a differential taken from an Audi S2. The dampers are all of the inboard variety (you get a fabulous view of the front two), and ensuring all the power is effectively transmitted to the tarmac, the ‘R8’ wears Avon slick tyres.

At the hands of driver Simon Bainbridge, the car looks phenomenally quick. It’s set to evolve into something even more monstrous, too - a peruse of SB Racing’s Facebook page shows that Bainbridge has a new project involving an Audi V10. One to keep an eye on, we think.