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Chasing the senses

Seeing, smelling, hearing, feeling, tasting – above and beyond ecology and economy, driving a car is primarily a sensual pleasure. Test driving the new R8 Spyder we set out for Galicia in northern Spain.

COPY/SVEN SCHULTE-RUMMEL
PHOTOS/SORIN MORAR

Our senses precede us like our shadow when the sun shines from behind. We use our eyes, for example, to permanently look towards the future, calculating what to do in the next second. Carefully turn the steering wheel a little further? Our eardrums work faster than our pupils, warning us to pay attention as the sound of a horn approaches. With our skin sensors, which react to vibration, we sense the hairpin bend and decide whether our foot should overcome the resistance of the accelerator. But how close can we get to our senses if they are constantly preceding us?

Sight, smell, hearing, touch and taste. It is primarily through the classic five senses that we perceive the outside world. Our sense organs long for information. They grasp anything in their vicinity, drawing it in like children drawing their parents to a carousel. Rods and cones in the eyes, receptors in the nose, the taste buds on the tongue, the sensitive eardrum, the network of nerves in the skin which are sensitive to warmth and touch, with which we taste, feel and sense ourselves. When our senses perceive weather conditions they use data-nerve highways to send electrical impulses to the brain, where, following an initial selection process, we become aware of the information. We make use of our wealth of experience – and then make a decision. Our grip firmly on the steering wheel: Can I squeeze another 20 horsepower out of the ten-cylinder engine in the Audi R8 Spyder – after all, 525 stallions (386 kW) are waiting in the stalls, just raring to go? Stop. Imagine that for just a moment your powers of perception were doubly intensive. Taste, smell, noise, colors and touch. The senses no longer have a chance to look forward, they exist in the here and now. They huddle against the experience like the leather of the R8 sport seats around the receptors in the shoulder region. A new dimension emerges from which there is no way back. Only a return to a normal life that is duller. Having been bombarded with fresh sensual impressions, nothing is the same, as a new climax of intensity has branded itself on our consciousness. An experience which leaves its mark, like holding hands with your first true love. This is the moment we captured our senses, and now you are close to your first trip in the R8 Spyder. Driving a car is a sensual experience – in virtually no other everyday situation are our senses called on more forcibly: Through the seat our tense body feels at one with the car, perceiving the slightest of changes, its roadholding and lateral acceleration as the four wheels dance across the asphalt. Together with our eyes and muscles a tiny organ in the inner ear is responsible for our equilibrium and right now is working full out so that we remain in control of the road. Depth sensitivity checks that everything is still in the right place.

Through our hearing we can check how fast the engine is running and whether the wheels are holding the road in tight bends. And decide whether it is time to shift up a gear with a tiny movement of the second and third fingers at the shift paddle on the steering wheel. When the comforting sound of the V10 engine reaches our eardrums, our nervous system injects adrenaline into the bloodstream, goose bumps cover the length of our arms, whereupon we reach out a hand and start feeling our way forward. Despite wanting to open our mouth in amazement, it remains firmly closed to preserve our sense of taste; our lips pressed together as if to protect them from the slight tang of the sea air. Our nose monitors the surroundings, testing air for the smell of hot brake pads and fresh leather. We take a deep breath and even if the wind does not hit us directly in the Spyder, the scent of the world wafts its way past the tiny hair cells to the 30 million olfactory cells. Just as well our sense of smell is sharper when sitting than when lying. We keep to the road using our eyes, even when the road markings become blurred at twilight, like footprints in the sand in a rising tide.

But the ride in an R8 Spyder is just the first sensual dimension. Few other means of transport make it so easy to reach classically “sensory” destinations in such a short space of time. Leave the loud, garish city with its permanent sense overkill, head for the even, rhythmical sound of the ocean, through dark forests to the shimmering green heartland, past rusty red cliffs on the way to deceptive silent peaks. Stop. Switch off the engine. The open-roof R8 succeeds in bridging the supposed gap between technology and nature. Supposed, because it is not about evaluating the antithesis of machine and environment, but about the intensity of our perception using all the senses. And beyond any evaluation, perception requires contrasts. The R8 Spyder and nature are not on different scales, but at different ends of one and the same scale. There is no light without darkness, no heat without cold, no sour without bitter and no hard without soft. Whispering can only become loud if the pleasantly sonorous sound of the V10 engine fades. The lack of wind is only perceived as intensively warm after your face has been whipped by the fresh sea air, when the convertible roof quietly closes over driver and passenger.