Audi has built a new V16-engined supercar

Since TopGear.com helped build the last ever Audi R8 in late 2024 Audi has had a big black hole in its line-up where there should be a mid-engined supercar. Until now.

This is the Lucca, it’s brand-spanking new, and it doesn’t pootle about with a piffling V10 in the back. This thing drinks methanol and breathes fire through a 6.0-litre V16 engine. Oh, and it’s supercharged. It’s vorsprung durch ANGRY.

As you might expect, there are one or two incey-wincey little asterisks here. First off, the Lucca – as we’ll come to – isn’t a new design, but a recreation of a 1930s legend.

Photography: Alex Tapley

Second: it’s not a production car. This stunning spaceship is a one-off commissioned by Ingolstadt’s heritage department, Audi Tradition.

Like its previous blast from the past – the tri-seat, V16-powered Type 52 brought back from the dead in 2024 – the Lucca has been a labour of love built by British classic motorsport specialists Crosthwaite & Gardiner.

After three years and a bill on the ‘don’t ask’ side of seven figures, the Lucca lives.

Why the strangely Italian name? Because that’s where the original wrote itself a page in the history books.

The year is 1935. Audi’s predecessor, Auto Union, is locked in civil war with Mercedes to build the fastest road-going cars on Earth. Auto Union’s latest contender is essentially the current grand prix racing ‘Type A’ monster clothed in slippery streamlined cladding. It weighs a little over 1,000kg and its 5.0-litre V16 roars out 343bhp.

It’s February. The plan was to try this latest Auto Union speed machine out on (closed) public roads in Hungary. But being February, the weather was grim. Auto Union hit on Italy instead.

After considering a stretch of autostrada between Bergamo and Brescia, they plumped for a new location 300km further south, between Florence and Viareggio in Tuscany. The nearest city? A charming Renaissance time-capsule called Lucca…

A 5km stretch was allocated for Auto Union to have a crack at records for the flying kilometre and flying mile. After test runs on Valentine’s Day, on 15th February 1935 the soon-to-be German racing megastar Hans Stuck climbed into the tiny single-seat cockpit and steered it to a v-max of 326.975kph.

That’s 203.17mph – the quickest anyone had been on a public road at the time.

Auto Union went on developing the ‘mad V16 in a lycra suit’ concept through the 1930s until WWII intervened, pushing towards speeds of 300 miles an hour. But the original Lucca was lost along the way.

Some say it was dismantled for parts after becoming superseded. Others reckon that like so many Auto Union racing icons, invading Russians collected them as war spoils in 1945. Either way, very few real Auto Unions exist in museums today – so Audi is quite literally rebuilding the family silver.

Because this new car has been created with the benefit of almost a century’s hindsight, Audi Tradition commissioned an upgrade. Instead of the period-correct 5.0-litre V16, it’s got the later 6.0-litre spec which is good for a claimed 520 horsepower. And it runs. Stay tuned to Top Gear’s YouTube channel for an exclusive look – and listen – coming very soon…

It’s also been finished to an exquisite standard. The open-gate manual gear linkage is polished to a mirror sheen. The hand-beaten panels have been painted in ‘Cellulose Silver' – an incredibly delicate texture that’s as close as possible to the original colour, using modern paints which aren’t as nasty on the human respiratory system as the old stuff.

The eagle-eyed will have spotted the speedo remains totally inadequate – it only reads to a pathetic 300kph (186mph)…

Audi will roll out this steampunk Batmobile for very occasional demonstration runs, but says there are no plans to attempt top speed shenanigans. Partly because of the price (lots), seatbelts (none) and crash protection (forget it). And also because there are mysteries still to be solved.

Lost to time is the mechanism by which Auto Union got the fighter plane-style canopy to stay fixed to the car’s superstructure at high speed. There are no drawings, no blueprints, no YouTube tutorial.

If the Lucca went for glory now, there’s a very real danger it would eject its top along the way.