Audi saloons are dying! Long live the Sportback
The German car maker is ditching the traditional three-box design in favour of boosted practicality and greater efficiency
Audi is debating whether to stop making saloon cars completely after its current line-up of A3, A4, A6 and A8 reach the end of their natural lifecycle, Auto Express can reveal. The news comes as the outgoing A4 transitions to A5, at the same time moving from a traditional saloon shape to a sleeker, more efficient sportback-style design.
Reflecting on the conception stages of the new car, Andreas Gotz, Audi’s project manager for A5, said: “We played both (saloon and Sportback) scenarios in the design process.
“We had to juggle with the hinge height,” he told us. “We moved everything back behind the heads of those in the back. We wanted to get the emotionality of the old A5 and put it in the A4 – because we didn’t have a successor for that car. But it was not a compromise.”
The Sportback bodystyle has been a stalwart of the Audi range ever since the five-door A5 and A7 models launched in 2009 and 2010 respectively. The sweeping, more aerodynamic design has subsequently transferred to the maker’s SUV range, and is currently offered on the Q3 and Q5, as well as the electric Q4 e-tron and Q8 e-tron models.
Ramon Baurle, one of Audi’s interior designers, also admitted that the five-door coupe shape was “a good development; the Sportback is more dynamic but still offers the usability,” he told us. “We think it’s the perfect compromise.”
In addition to the new A5, we’ve also already seen spy pictures of the forthcoming A6 e-tron during its testing phase. Following a near-production ready concept shown in 2021, that car will also adopt a more coupe-like design than what went before it.
We’ve no official word on when the A8 will become the A9, nor whether it’ll definitely favour a sleeker profile like the new A5. But, if we once again look back at previous design studies, such as the Grandsphere concept from the 2021 Munich Motor Show, it’s clear that even then Audi was considering a more aero-inspired silhouette for its next-generation four-door flagship.
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