Automakers may never produce race cars at the same
pace they do road cars, but the Volkswagen Group has made a brisk business of
selling competition machinery. That includes Audi, which has already produced
50 examples of the new R8 LMS GT4.
Unveiled almost a year ago at the New York Auto
Show, the new LMS model serves as the entry point in Audi Sport’s customer
racing lineup. It’s based closely on the road-going R8, but is modified for the
production-based GT4 category.
Even more so than the GT3 model, the new GT4 shares
some 60 percent of its components with the production model. It’s even powered
by the same 5.2-liter V10 engine and seven-speed dual-clutch transmission. But
it has a different suspension, aero kit, rolling stock, and cockpit (among
other elements) catered towards competition duty.
Audi started producing them along the same assembly
line as the street-legal R8 at its Böllinger Höfe plant in Germany just a few
months ago, rolling them out at a rate of one each day. This out of the 8-15
(or as many as 29) total R8s the factory produces on a daily basis. The
automaker delivered the first dozen examples to its customer racing teams in
December, and by now has produced 50 of them.
In addition to the GT3 and GT4 versions of the R8
LMS, Audi also offers the TCR-spec RS3 LMS. Volkswagen similarly offers the
Polo GTI R5 rally car and Golf GTI TCR tin-top racer for customer racing teams.
Skoda and Seat/Cupra similarly offer the Fabia R5 and Leon TCR, while
Lamborghini and Bentley produce GT3 versions of their Huracan and Continental
GT. The largest producer of racing cars in the world, however, is Porsche,
which offers the 911 GT3 Cup and GT3 R, though the Cayman GT4 Clubsport has
been put on hiatus pending the arrival of the all-new model.
