I like Audi. I’ve only owned one myself, but growing up, my father had two Audi 80’s, a red one that looked like, well, like cars did in the early 80’s, and that I was adamant he fit a rubber spoiler to such as to make it more alike the more powerful E-version, which if memory serves me right had all of 113 hp… He then traded it for the last Audi 80, the one that looked like a soap, which he for some reason ordered in beige metallic, like the one below. I’ve so far only owned one Audi myself, an A6 3-litre diesel that I ran as company car back in the days you had those, some 20 years ago. It was a great car and so far the only car I’ve owned that I’ve managed to fill up with the wrong fuel.

It was on the way back to Zurich from Lugano in southern Switzerland that I stopped to re-fuel at the last station before the 17km long Gotthard tunnel. The Audi was the first diesel I ever had, so by habit I grabbed the petrol hose which, being thinner, fits into a diesel tank opening. I made it three km into the tunnel before the car stopped, and only then did I realize my mistake. I managed to roll onto an emergency parking, opened the door, and was first struck by the heat in the tunnel, and then almost by a truck that ran by half a metre away. No doubt one of the scariest moments in my relatively peaceful life!

An emergency truck came within 10 minutes (they’re pretty alert on each side of the tunnel as to avoid any mishaps, which I’m eternally grateful for!). He loaded up the car and drove us to the nearest garage in a small Swiss moutain village. The garage owner looked all happy when he realized it was a quattro, as that meant the car had two fuel tanks that are separate, meaning he would earn twice the money. You see, the way to empty a tank, at least back then, is to put the car in a rotating frame which turns it on its side so that the fuel runs out. Which in my case had to be done twice. He no doubt thought I was a complete big city idiot, but he congratulated me on having filled up when the tank was practically empty. Had it been half full, he said, the engine would have run, but you would have ruined it completely. Oops.

Coming back to Audi, more recently, before buying my current BMW 540i, I thought long and hard about an RS4 of the 2011-2015 B8 generation instead, with the fabulous 4.2 litre, naturally aspirated V8. Reason prevailed then, but in my quest for something more GT-like, I’ve recently looked closer at the RS5 coupe from the same generation. More on that to follow in later posts. The point I want to make, and which both those cars examplify brilliantly, is that they’re not only good-looking, but also built with an interior quality that is so solid it feels like nothing could break it. That by the way also goes for the D2 Audi A8 that I wrote about last year. Unfortunately, it seems to be something Audi’s engineers have since forgotten how to do.

European, and especially the German luxury car brands are all struggling to find their place in a world that somehow is supposed to become fully electric, but where the goal posts keep moving. Certainly no easy task and manufacturers have my sympathy, at least to a certain extent. As the completely unrealistic political EV targets have been revised, Mercedes, BMW and Audi have for now settled on a combination of ICE’s, hybrids and EV’s, such as to be covered whichever way the wind blows next.

As part of this process, Audi last year decided to let the model names reflect the power source so that cars with an even number, like the A4, would henceforth be EV’s, and cars with uneven numbers, like the A5, would be ICE’s. It was of course too bad they had just launched the A8 which is an ICE, so they added that this would only apply to new models. Like the new A6 that was introduced at the beginning of this year. Except for the fact that the A6 is not only an EV, but also available with various petrol and diesel engines. I would love to have listened in on the meetings in Ingolstadt when the decision on this complete mess was taken!

Luckily, it didn’t prevent the design department from continuing to do a great job. Taste is individual but personally I love Audi’s current line-up in terms of exterior design, from the muscular A3 up to the Q8, especially as coupe, but also including the spectacular E-tron coupe. The cars look bloody good, with the difference between EV’s and ICE’s limited to minor points like a different front grill. I’m glad to see that this validates a point I made in post a couple of years ago, that the innovative design language that Audi and other brands limited to EV’s at the time, as it was said to be the only future, is now carried over also to ICE’s, as it becomes clear we’ll have them for far longer than some people imagined.

What Audi seem to have forgotten however, is how to build an interior that is as solid as in a B8 from 10 years ago. Seeing the new S6 station wagon (which, just to clarify, is an EV) at my local Audi dealer last week, I went in for a closer look. Opening the door, you’re greeted by an interior dominated by the mandatory giant infotainment screen. Audi have opted for a horizontal layout that goes from the door to the middle of the car. It looks nice and modern, although perhaps unnecessarily big, until you realize that next to it is another, optional screen for the passenger. That smaller screen is in a different shape and shows parts of the information from the main screen. But given the main screen stretches well into the passenger’s field of vision, why on earth would anyone need it? Obviously Audi isn’t the only manufacturer doing passenger screens, but that doesn’t make it better.

As also seems to be mandatory today, the S6 has tactile controls on the steering wheel as well as on the inside of the door. Apparently these have become so fashionable because tactile surfaces are cheaper to produce than traditional switches, and they certainly feel like it. The S6 has a plethora of functions on the door side in addition to the window controls, all within one tactile plate that feels like it moves when you touch it. Forget about adjusting anything here while driving!

Slightly further below the door handle is however where it gets really bad. The plastic used for door pockets and most of the trim below your waistline is hard plastic of the really cheap-feeling kind, the type that makes nasty sounds when you scratch it. We’re talking many quality levels below what you find in a B8 from 2014, or indeed what would have been deemed acceptable at the time. Plastic of course has the benefit of not only being cheap, but also light. And that’s something the S6 definitely needs, given it’s a car that being the EV it is, weighs in at an almost obscene 2.500 kg. That’s more than my old Range Rover with that wonderful V8, and without any interior plastics of any kind.

The list price for the S6 in Switzerland is CHF 105.000, around USD 125.000. You read that right, and that’s before options, of which the list is long in Audi’s world. Based on early tests, the S6 is a great family drive, but quality-wise it feels like it’s worth half its price and above all, it feels far cheaper than a Chinese EV that costs far less whilst giving you a better range. It’s simply not good enough. The ICE-hybrid version of the same car is less powerful but can be filled up at any petrol station when you run out of battery power, and doesn’t cost as much, even fully optioned. It still won’t give you better plastics or real switches though.

Of course, Mercedes and BMW are not much better than Audi, and all of them are worse today than five years ago. At which time they were already worse than five years prior to that. It’s a sad truth that my E63 Wagon from 2014 had a better interior quality than my BMW 540i from 2019, which in turn is miles better than the new 5-series. It’s becoming increasingly clear that the peak of German automobile building was around 10 years ago, in the mid-2010’s. The residual values of cars from that generation compared to later generations will confirm that story, and also show you that I’m not alone neither in thinking so, nor in appreciating it.

Let me therefore make a humble suggestion to the management teams in Ingolstadt, Stuttgart and Munich. You’re currently on the road to perdition, so please reverse course while you still can as it’s getting really late. There is good news though: a vast majority of your clients don’t want EV’s anyway, so just leave that market to the Chinese, especially since you can’t compete with them anyway.

What most of your clients love on the other hand is the great cars you used to build. So stop the screen size race with functions we neither want, nor use. We don’t need to talk to our cars, or have it point out the next restaurant. Scrap the tactile surfaces and give us real switches. Adjusting the seat position on the side of the same seat worked absolutely fine. We want the solidity of an RS4/B8 or an E63/W212, combined with the playfullness of an M3/F80, all at well under two tons. We all know ICE’s will still be around for a long time, and adding a sufficient number of hybrids will allow you to comply with legal requirements. Therefore, go back to building the best ICE cars in the world before it’s too late!

if you’re wondering about the headline, it’s to be pronounced as an expression of pain at something that is, but doesn’t have to be…