The Audi R8R is one of the Audi entries the open record knows by name, and by little else. That is not nothing: a name in the catalogue is where a car's story starts to be recoverable. Its designer of record is Michael Pfadenhauer / Wolfgang Appel.
How it came about
The Audi R8R was a Le Mans Prototype built by Audi for the 1999 24 Hours of Le Mans, and a predecessor to the dominant Audi R8 which debuted in 2000. It was raced alongside the British built closed-cockpit Audi R8C.
The hardware
it is rated at 610 hp. These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.
Family and rivals
Where it sits in Audi's history is not in doubt: the Audi R8 followed it. Its Audi stablemates include the Audi 200 and the Audi 225.
The money
EPA combined economy is 17 mpg, about $5,150 a year in fuel at the EPA's assumptions. Condition, mileage and specification move any single car a long way from a headline figure.