Coming Soon: The Audi R8 Limo – The Fastest Limousine in the World

              It’s no secret that one of the reasons Audi cars rank so highly as performance vehicles is their engines. In addition to being used in the Audi-branded vehicles we all know and love, however, the automaker’s powertrains have also been used in other performance cars over the years.

Among the interesting and exotic vehicles powered by Audi engines are the 1989 Zender Fact 4, a concept car that was fitted with the same 3.6-liter 4-valve-per-cylinder twin-cam V8 that was used in that year’s Quattro sedan, a German sports car known as the Gumpert Apollo (which also used a V8 engine, though this time it was a 4163 cc bi-turbo, intercooled version), and the Spyker C8 Aileron, which comes equipped with a 290 horsepower 4.2-liter V8.

This week, however, Audi engines – and Audi cars in general – made a leap in a different direction. The London-based corporation Limo Broker has announced the creation of the fastest limousine in the world, and it’s basically a super-powered, stretched out, Audi R8.

            While it’s not yet available for actual use, the Audi R8 limousine will be built to street-legal specifications, sporting the same 5.2-liter, 525 horsepower V-10 engine in the standard R8, which is said to accelerate from 0 to 62 miles per hour in a mere 3.9 seconds, and reach a top speed of 197 mph. The stretch limo doesn’t yet have any official test results, but it seems likely that it will break the current speed record (held by a Ferrari limousine) of 0-60 mph acceleration in 6 seconds, with little trouble.

Speed, of course, is just one aspect of the Audi R8 stretch limousine. Inside, there is room for eight passengers, seated in three rows of red-upholstered bucket seats that face forward. Other features include gull-wing doors (reminiscent of retro DeLoreans) for the second and third rows of seats, with conventional doors for rows one and four. The limo will likely be fitted with the same R-tronic automated manual transmission system found in conventional Audi R8s, but there is no final word on whether it will also have the Quattro all-wheel drive.

        Who had the bright idea to build this super-limousine? According to Limo Broker, which says at least one stretch R8 should be available to rent in about three months, it’s being manufactured by Carbonyte UK, the very same automaker that built the Ferrari 360 limousine mentioned above.

We’re not sure if more than one stretch R8 will be constructed, but we do know that finding cheap car insurance for such a unique vehicle is likely to be a challenge.