Audi R8 Torn In Half After Colliding With VW Van

An Audi R8 was violently cut in half on a wet road between Kastelbell and Latsch, just shy of the Austrian border in northern Italy, following a massive crash with a VW van this past Saturday morning.

According to Suedtirol News, the driver of the Audi miraculously walked away almost unharmed, with all his injuries being described as minor by the Latsch volunteer fire brigade. Meanwhile, the other driver was also just slightly injured, and both were taken to a local hospital.

It took authorities roughly two hours to reopen the road to traffic, mostly because there were a lot of spilled liquids to deal with (for which a street sweeper had to be called in), but also heavy rainfall.

While the van is only slightly visible in these images, we can tell that its front end took some damage and that its left-front tire is askew. As for the second-gen Audi R8, its bottom-half basically broke up from the rest of the body, taking the supercar’s V10 engine and rear axle along for the ride.

Thankfully, the cockpit wasn’t impacted directly by the looks of things, which is what ultimately made this accident survivable. Well, that and the fact that the airbags did their job, as did the R8’s solid structure, which in the second-gen model features more carbon fiber and less large aluminum parts.

Bottom line, its driver should consider himself extremely luckly, especially since we suspect he must have first lost control of his car before it made contact with the VW.

H/T to Wolfgang

Photos: Latsch Volunteer Fire Brigade