A couple of months ago Audi’s R8 popped up in the Iron Man movie trailer. Audi has just provided us with this sneak shot of Robert Downey Jr as billionaire Tony Stark with his daily driver. When the techno hero isn’t protected by his Iron Man suit, he calls on the power of his R8 to keep things safe. The film’s leading lady, Virginia “Pepper” Potts, played by Gwyneth Paltrow, also gets around in an Audi. Her’s is of the S5 variety.

Here in Canada, the automotive media world is largely governed by the Automobile Journalists Association of Canada. This long standing organization holds an annual TestFest, where members drive and rate dozens of new vehicles each Fall. There are twelve categories, aimed at helping new car buyers make deciding on a new vehicle a bit easier. At the annual Toronto International Autoshow in February, one overall winner is crowned the AJAC Car of the Year.

Category winners after the break
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German tourists and the Audi R8 by Russ Bond

Good friend and occasional commenter here in The Garage Jouni Ranta is one of those Ontarians whose transplanted himself to a Canadian mountain town. He began his day today with a walk to the office. Rough life in those mountain towns. Anyway, back to our brush with an R8 story.

While walking through a gas station parking lot, Herr Ranta came across a fully fueled R8 about to drive off with it’s fuel door open. Being the friendly Canadian, our hero struck up a conversation with the forgetful R8 driver. One thing led to another and they headed off to a hotel together.

Ok, this is a car blog so get your head out of the gutter. One was working in the hotel, the other was staying there. Hmmm..this isn’t getting any better now, is it? The driver was none other than legendary Canadian automotive trekker Garry Sowerby in one of the Audi R8 Performance Tour cars. Imagine that. One Canadian fellow in a cool car offers a ride to another Canadian fellow in a small mountain town. You’d almost think someone scripted that. This is real life, you can’t script these things. Unless of course there was a Mountie in the picture.

Another friend of The Garage, Russ Bond was actually taking part in the R8 Performance Tour and while Rustye didn’t meet up with the Mounties on his travels from Barrie, Ontario all the way to Thunder Bay, he did manage to get some photo ops with the OPP. Be sure to visit Russ’ full account of the trek over at Painkillerz.ca where he not only has some great shots and the full story, but he’s also filmed a pretty cool V-log of the trip. Very cool.

I was never a big comic book guy, but you’ve seriously gotta love all these movies being made from comic books. The latest comic to come to life is Ironman, which includes an Audi R8 in the opening shot of the trailer. This looks like it will be one of 2008’s coolest flicks.

Audi has something good going on with the R8 supercar and they know it. The problem is, there isn’t enough of them to go around. In order to make sure as many enthusiasts as possible get to lay eyes on the new machine, Audi is sending 15 journalists on a cross Canada jaunt from Cape Spear, all the way to the west, finishing up in Victoria, BC.

Friend of The Garage, Russ Bond from Painkillerz is lucky enough to be along for the section from Barrie, Ontario to Thunder Bay, Ontario. In fact, Russ is having a month filled with R8 goodness, having visited the press launch for the car last week and will spend next week with the press car. While Russ is on the road with the Audi R8 Trans-Canada Performance Tour, he’ll be updating Painkillerz readers with daily photos and stories.

I got my first on the road glimpse of Audi’s new supercar, the R8, on Highway 407 on Friday afternoon. The beast has hit the streets. It was fitting then that there were 2 in attendance at the Mosport Grand Prix on Saturday morning. The silver mid engined coupe looked somewhat forlorn sitting on the hill overlooking a wet and foggy turn 1.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

This morning there was the press release. Now, through the magic of YouTube we have the film for you!

60 Seconds of Audi history after the break
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