If you’re of the opinion that recent non-RS Audis are a bit staid, you’ll garner agreement from a surprising cohort: the decision-makers at Audi. They’re well aware that they need to conjure the old swagger that put baseball stitching in the TT and a Lambo V-10 in the S6. And they’re serious, as exemplified by the Nuvolari, a car that seems blasted straight out of the Piëch era of Volkswagen Audi Group unfettered ambition. Hey, you can’t spell audacity without “Audi.”
Besides the obvious fact that Audi’s new mid-engine flagship has a real name rather than an alphanumeric (its namesake did some heroic driving for the Auto Union grand prix team in the 1930s), just consider its basic parameters. The Nuvolari checks in with an estimated 987 horsepower, a top speed claimed to be beyond 217 mph, and pricing that should land in the upper $600,000s. Only 499 cars will be built. Not only is the Nuvolari one-upping its Lamborghini relative, the Temerario, it’s also more exotic than anything from Porsche since the 918 Spyder. At the Nuvolari’s unveiling, in France, I asked Audi CEO Gernot Döllner whether the Nuvolari signified the end of Volkswagen’s rigid hierarchy, in which Audi kept a respectful distance from the luxury brands higher up the org chart. “No, there’s still a hierarchy,” he said. “But . . .” he smiled and shrugged. The Nuvolari is Audi putting its gun and badge on the commissioner’s desk and hitting the streets to follow nobody’s rules but its own.
It was able to do that in part because the project was secret, executed by a small team at Audi in 405 days, from proposal to prototype. Anyone working on the Nuvolari signed an NDA. When the car debuted in June, I asked whether all 499 examples were already presold, since that’s what would happen with a car like this from, say, Ferrari. The answer was no. In fact, they hadn’t sold any, because the car was kept secret from customers along with everyone else. How refreshing. By the time you read this, all the Nuvolaris might have buyers, but it certainly wasn’t a case of Audi deciding who gets one based on how many R8s they bought.
Like the R8, the Nuvolari is related to a Lamborghini. But where the R8 was always positioned below its Lamborghini kin (the Gallardo and then the Huracán), the Nuvolari is unequivocally higher status than the Temerario, with which it shares its architecture. Compared to the Temerario, the Nuvolari has an extra 80 horsepower. It’s wider. It’s obviously more expensive and exclusive. And it’s got a mind of its own.
“A Lamborghini, when you’re driving, it’s supposed to feel like taming a bull,” says Rouven Mohr, Audi chief technical officer. “The Nuvolari is not like that.” Mohr worked on both the Temerario and the Nuvolari, and the Audi philosophy is for the car to complement its driver, foregoing the frisson of light antagonism in favor of proactive cooperation. In fact, the Nuvolari will observe your driving and begin to cover for any ham-handedness when it can. Like if you’re the type to get greedy with the throttle on the way out of corners, the Nuvolari might ready a smidge of extra torque vectoring from the front electric motors to keep the nose from pushing wide. Audi calls the system Quattro Predictive Ride, and its inclusion does not render the Nuvolari an aloof bundle of code. Far from it, as I learned on a private road outside Monterey after the confetti flew at Pebble Beach.
The car you see here is the same one that debuted in France, the same one that lapped Monaco ahead of the F1 race. It’s the same one that was on display at The Quail and at Pebble Beach. As you may have now inferred, this is the Nuvolari. It’s the prototype, the car that was born in 405 days and presages the U.S. production cars that will arrive in late 2027. Nuvolari number 000 could thus be expected to incorporate a fair amount of duct tape and jankiness. Instead, it looks like it could be in a dealer showroom. Everything works except the backup camera. And it’s very much drivable.
The venue is sparsely populated private property with miles of sinuous roads that wind through hills and pastures and stands of redwood trees. First, I ride shotgun with Döllner, at one point functioning as a rally navigator as we both try to recall which blind corner had the wild turkeys wandering across the road. Döllner clearly enjoys the Nuvolari, and he can drive. And if all I did was get a ride, that would be a nice preview, but Audi was brave enough to turn over its only Nuvolari for some wheel time. I don’t know the German translation of YOLO, but Audi’s certainly embracing it these days.
The copilot for my drive is Victor Underberg, performance manager for sports cars at Audi. The first bit of theater comes when you open the door, since the handle is hidden in the blacked-out air ducts that evoke the R8’s famous side blade. Only when you open the door do you see that it’s funneling air to cool both the engine and the rear brakes. Cooling a near-1000-hp furnace of kinetic energy is hard enough, but doing so elegantly led to some wonderful design.
We buckle in, I press the start button and . . . nothing seems to happen, because the car powers up in hybrid EV mode. (If the Nuvolari hews to the Temerario’s 3.8-kWh battery capacity, it’ll have about five miles of EV range.) Underberg tells me to switch to Dynamic mode, and the twin-turbo 4.0-liter V-8 erupts behind our heads. The turbos pull air from intakes that are mounted at about ear level relative to the seats, so there’s plenty of aural induction drama even at idle. Between the chassis and powertrain modes, you can optimize the Nuvolari for everything from comfortable long-distance street driving to a no-nannies track blitz. For a fun street drive, go for Dynamic on the chassis and Qualify on the powertrain.
Then pull the right paddle for first gear, because the Nuvolari’s minimalist interior has no Drive button or gear lever. There are three buttons on the console for Park, Reverse, and Manual mode. I’ll be interested to see if the production car includes cupholders, but there are none here to clutter the aesthetic. For a seemingly unadorned interior, there are a lot of beautiful details—the HVAC vents are black aluminum, and the toggle to switch air direction moves with a precise click. Underberg assures me that in the production car, the click will be even more satisfying. (I’m not sure how, but they’ve got people on it.) Behind the seats is a shelf for luggage, since the potential frunk area up front is devoted to the S-duct that helps contribute to the Nuvolari’s “more than 882 pounds” of predicted downforce. Fitted luggage is in the works.
From the driver’s seat, the Nuvolari’s dominant trait is immediacy. It reacts instantly to steering input but isn’t nervous. In Manual mode, a new gear is summoned before you’re even done pulling the paddle, and you’re more likely to short-shift than hit the rev limiter because your ears say that winding beyond 8000 rpm is preposterous. The CCM-R brakes—long-strand carbon, for superior heat dissipation—are staggeringly powerful. Audi says the prototype’s 60-mph braking distance is 102 feet, which means an average of 1.18 g’s. I imagine that at higher speeds, with the downforce in play, these brakes would give you raspberries from the seatbelts.
And it’s loud in there. You hear the V-8, both scree from the intakes and bellow from the exhaust, and there’s no perceptible lack of integration from the electric motors. They’re heaving torque at the bottom end (and, up front, constantly helping dial in your intended line), but you don’t get the sensation that there are two forms of propulsion at work. The effect is just 10,000-rpm V-8, strong everywhere.
As my wheel time is nearing its end, Underberg says, “I hope the people who buy this car don’t just park it in a collection. I hope they actually drive it. That’s what it’s for.” Preach, Victor. Get out there, Nuvolari owners, and spread the message of good things to come.
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Ezra Dyer is a Car and Driver senior editor and columnist. He's now based in North Carolina but still remembers how to turn right. He owns a 2009 GEM e4 and once drove 206 mph. Those facts are mutually exclusive.
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