Just when you think Audi has become too dull and too SUV-focused, it pulls a 1,001hp hybrid supercar, named for one of the greatest racing drivers in history, out of the bag.
This is the Audi Nuvolari, and while we’ve been through the promise-to-disappointment cycle of sporty Audis too many times in the past (Avus concept, Quattro spider concept, Quattro Coupe concept, R8 e-Tron) this time around the promise has already been made and kept – this dramatic mid-engined car is going into production in 2027 and Audi says it will build 499 of them.
The styling of this stunning car is the work of a team headed by Audi’s recently-arrived new head of design, Massimo Frascella, formerly of Jaguar Land Rover. It’s the same team which designed the equally gorgeous Concept C sports car, an all-electric successor to the Audi TT which is also scheduled to go into production next year.
“With the Audi Nuvolari, we are accelerating technological progress,” says Gernot Döllner, Audi’s chairman of the board. “It shows what is possible when the focus is on technology, performance, and execution through teamwork – and when we achieve progress together.”
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The Nuvolari is obviously larger and more dramatic than the Concept C, but shares that car’s relative simplicity of line, and features the same stark, simple, upright grille at the front, which will eventually become Audi’s new corporate ‘face’.
Even the colour – titanium silver – is shared with the Concept C and, not coincidentally, with Audi’s newly-minted Formula One racing car.
Under that skin – a carbon-fibre body formed over a classical Audi aluminium spaceframe – there’s a complex hybrid system based around a 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8 petrol engine which revs to a massive 10,000rpm.
That alone produces 800hp, with the balance made up by three ultra-slim ‘axial flow’ electric motors. One of those motors is sandwiched between the engine and its gearbox, while the other two each power an individual front wheel, powered by a compact 7.3kWh battery, giving the Nuvolari a complex form of quattro four-wheel drive.
Indeed, Audi has dubbed the Nuvolari’s drive concept ‘quattro predictive ride’. Detailed sensor data – including steering angle, acceleration, yaw rate (that’s the rotation of the vehicle around its central vertical axis, which determines steering response in corners) and current grip level – continuously feed into the control system and in theory the system can predict, up to a point, what is coming next and pre-load the various motors and controls systems accordingly.
The Nuvolari will have Ferrari-threatening power at a time when Ferrari fans are reeling, somewhat, from the unveiling of that company’s all-electric Luce model. The Nuvolari will accelerate from 0-100km/h in just 2.6 seconds, and will run on – where legal and appropriate – to more than 350km/h
To keep such wild performance under control, Audi has fitted the Nuvolari with a complex aerodynamic system that includes a ’S-Duct’ aero tunnel under the nose (an idea lifted from Audi’s decades of dominating sports car racing at Le Mans) and an active rear wing which can adjust from low to high downforce settings, generating up to 400kg of downforce as it does so.
There’s also a set of massive carbon-ceramic brakes. These may not be needed much, as the Nuvolari’s electric motors can deploy regenerative braking which slows the car at up to 0.3G, which is quite substantial. For when mechanical braking is what you need, though, the front discs measure a whopping 420mm across, and they’re clamped by 10-piston calipers. Audi claims the braking system design has been directly inspired by its current F1 experience.
Inside, the cabin is minimalist but sees the return of some proper physical buttons, not least the switch on the steering wheel that allows you to decide between the different driving modes – e-Hybrid, Balanced, Dynamic, and Dynamic +. The rest is divided into two sections: a darker-toned front area, meant to improve driver concentration, and a lighter-toned rear section, meant to be more relaxing, which is possibly something that Audi will roll out on its future four-seat models.
Why is the car called Nuvolari? It’s named after Tazio Nuvolari, an Italian racing driver whose heyday was the 1920s and 1930s, when he was rightly considered to be the best in the world.
Indeed, the late, great Formula One commentator Murray Walker, named Nuvolari as the best racing driver ever, and his exploits in the tricky Auto Union V16 Grand Prix car were testament to that skill. Auto Union is, of course, a predecessor of Audi, and Nuvolari would have sat behind the wheel of a car bearing the same four-ringed badge, hence the connection.
