Solving the Mystery of the Audi Nuvolari’s Massive Fuel Door Button

There’s something different about the Audi Nuvolari. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that pretty much nobody saw it coming, or maybe it’s the uncompromising Bauhaus ethos toward its design, an aesthetic that almost makes the last-gen R8 look cute by comparison.

Whatever it is, every aspect of the Nuvolari feels purposefully crafted—which is why its ginormous fuel-filler cap and hazard switches are so strange.

The Drive Editor-in-Chief Kyle Cheromcha recently got up close to the Nuvolari during Monterey Car Week. He also had an opportunity to speak to Massimo Frascella, Audi’s Chief Creative Officer and Head of Design, about the vehicle and the bold statement it makes on the future of Ingolstadt’s products.

Kyle inquired about that pair of switches for a couple of reasons. Firstly, as we’ve discussed, they’re impossible to miss, taking the form of chunky knobs rather than discreet buttons. Second, they occupy a rather prominent portion of real estate in an interior that is pretty spartan. There are only a few physical inputs on the center console and infotainment stack, and they rival the big engine start/stop button in terms of ergonomic priority.

Perhaps you could defend the emphasis on the hazards, but fuel-door controls tend to be buried very low on the dash in a great many cars; they also aren’t usually a shorter reach for the passenger than the driver. When Kyle asked Frascella how it came to be, the design boss exchanged a long look and chuckle with Audi’s PR rep, noted the specificity of the observation, and didn’t exactly go in-depth with his answer.

“I think that was a place that felt logical and timed in the development of the interior,” Frascella said, shortly before adding that there was “no particular reason” for its location. “It’s interesting. It’s not something that I particularly go to and it’s interesting that you actually pointed it out.”

Now, those who have studied the Nuvolari may have picked up that it shares quite a lot of hardware with the Lamborghini Temerario, not unlike the relationship between the R8 and the Gallardo and Huracán before it. Naturally, this led us to survey the cabin of Lamborghini’s latest V8 supercar to see if it also bore the same design quirk.

Sure enough, the Temerario also stashes its fuel door and hazard toggles in close-by areas, with a few distinctions. The Lambo uses smaller switches, rather than big rockers. The panel that carries the angled infotainment screen also doesn’t fully connect with the transmission tunnel like it does on the Nuvolari, so these inputs are flat on the tunnel itself. It looks like Audi’s designers placed those knobs where they did, at the very bottom of that panel, to reach down and manipulate the same internal switches.

This is our theory, anyway; Audi clearly doesn’t want to say more, and we can only guess as to why. If the Temerario’s architecture and the Nuvolari’s rather short gestation tied the engineers’ hands on this one, we won’t know for sure anytime soon, though that could explain Frascella’s comment about the decision being “timed in the development of the vehicle.” But hey, if you ever wonder why things are the way they are, and find yourself lucky enough to sit inside a Nuvolari one day, now you can potentially save yourself a question.

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