– the Audi A6…or is this the A4? Oh, it IS the A4

The most boring car designers must have been working for Audi and not Porsche as everyone seems to think. This has been my view on the current crop of Audi vehicles as of late. Have you ever looked at an Audi A4, A6 or the A8 recently? Or the new sportback variants as well as the A1 and the Q5 or Q7 SUVs? They all seem to have the same front end grafted on regardless of their shape and size. In fact, when it comes to the shape, all the sedans look the same and the A1 looks like a smaller sized Q5 with two doors.

-The Audi A6, wait…this is the A8

It continues with the designs of the sedans. The current B8 A4 looks like the new A6 which in turns looks like the new A8. I would suggest that if you were shopping for an Audi sedan you should just buy the A4 and forget about spending more money on the supposedly larger models. In fact you could actually save money and buy an ‘A6’ badge and stick it at the rear of your A4. No one aside from Audi enthusiasts will be able to tell the difference. And this may prove to be correct as Audi has recently admitted to the folks at Autocar magazine about its design drawbacks at an Audi Design Event over at London recently.

Audi design director Stefan Sielaffstated that Audi is now in the midst of defining a set of individual themes for each of the three major model families which in short are called AQR -‘A’ for Audi saloons and hatchbacks, ‘Q’ for the Quattro SUVs and ‘R’ for the sporty models. This new design philosophy is quite simple actually. Audi vehicles will still have a prominent face, but now the lights and the grille sit up front will be different for each variant. For example, the saloon will have a grille that is less upright than the SUV and the coupes will be even more rakish up front.

Sielaff had also stated that “It will mean differences, say in the way the headlights meet up with the grille; the design details will be different”. I hope Audi does get this correct as the only styling change I seem to really see on the nose of an Audi is how the LED driving lights are shaped in an Audi. If you noticed, the LED lights in the A4 are nicely curved, whereas the A6 seems to be just dull and straight and the A5 has an LED strip that is better looking than the A6 but not as striking as the A4 saloon. It’s just cosmetic actually. There are no real changes in styling from one variant to another.

Even Porsche seems to have more variety when it comes to styling. No one is going to tell you that a Porsche 911 looks like a Cayenne or a Panamera. And with that, it does seem that Audi really does need an injection of design philosophy more than even dull ol’ Volkswagen.

-The Audi A6…Really

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