Testing, testing

Those early photos of the Audi Nuvolari gave me a visceral pang of excitement - as in ‘wow, so that’s what it felt like to be a 10-year-old petrolhead’.

- RICHARD LANE

This was unexpected and not very Audi. But then the £500,000, 217mph, 499-off Nuvolari isn’t very Audi in general - more on which in a moment.

The last car to successfully administer such a feeling on the strength of the release imagery alone was Alfa’s Giulia GTAm in 2020, and before it Porsche’s 991-generation 911 GT2 RS. I remember these incidences because they’re rare. There’s an archaic coolness about those cars and the Nuvolari has it too. To my eyes the Nuvolari - a loss-leading skunkworks effort that CEO Gernot Döllner was effectively press-ganged into signing off, depending on who you listen to - is Sauber C9 meets Lamborghini Murciélago.

I scrolled to the comments on autocar.co.uk, to gauge the prevailing sentiment, and was met with criticism of the derivative engineering. “Very much a tarted-up Temerario,” read one.

The tone is snarky but the observation is not wrong. The Nuvolari’s tri-motor V8 setup will have a fatter torque curve than its application in the Lamborghini Temerario, and at 987bhp the system makes even more power. But the kit is ultimately shipped in wholesale from Sant’Agata.