The engineers took the company’s considerable race experience and threw it all at the R8: The standard R8's lightweight aluminum body panels were ditched in favor of even lighter carbon fiber, and the stock windshield was replaced with a thinner unit with the aim of taking more pounds off. Even the side glass has been sent to the trash bin, swapped instead for polycarbonate. The result of those efforts is a 220-pound weight difference compared with the base Euro-spec vehicle.

Even better, power from the 5.2-liter V10 engine has been nudged up to 560 horsepower, resulting in a zero-to-60 mph time of 3.6 seconds. Inside, Audi has even gone so far as to build in a half roll cage (for certain European track days) as well as a power cut-off switch.

Unfortunately, the vehicle gets watered down a bit once it comes to the U.S. The R8 GT loses its excellent lightweight sport bucket seats and 4-point harnesses in favor of plusher examples -- and while plush isn't bad, it is heavy. The change adds at least 70 pounds to the vehicle.

We were able to spend some time with the R8 GT on the German autobahn, and trust us when we say the car is beyond fast. As excellent as the standard V10 R8 is, the R8 GT takes that knife edge and puts it to a whetstone. Everything simply feels sharper because the vehicle weighs so much less. It’s brilliant, to be sure -- but we’re not sure it makes much sense in the States.

Audi says that it will ask $256,000 for each of the 333 examples of the car it plans to produce; however, this not-quite-track-equi​pped, not-quite-comfortabl​e grand tourer is sort of a middle child of the R8 family. Its safety equipment won’t pass any trackside safety inspection for competition in the U.S., which makes us wonder if the cutoff switch and roll cage are really necessary.

Those minor details aside, believe us when we say that you won’t hear us arguing that Audi shouldn’t have build the R8 GT. The machine is pure speed, made even faster, and that's something we can always get behind.