[GTO]

I'm going against the tide, but I LOVE the new A4. Would any day pick it up over the quirky C-Class. Clean, timeless & proportionate - just how German cars ought to be . The thought of a car with this styling & a 6-cylinder engine in my garage makes me drool.

Equally, I'll agree that this shocking level of similarity with the outgoing generation & cheaper A3 doesn't make good business sense. Audi is known for understated class and they could have certainly achieved it without keeping the design the same.

And that screen glued onto the dashboard just looks so awful .

[Khushrav]

Mercedes must be heaving a huge sigh of relief and must be doing a muted celebration. The new Audi is almost a face lift. The exteriors are too common now and do not inspire the heart to soar. The interiors though look modern. The tough part will be for Audi to match up to the new C and the easiest way out will be pricing.

What Audi needs do to is offer disruptive pricing. If they can offer it at the same price as the existing model, then they will undercut the C by a huge margin and that will get them the volumes.

[GKR9900]

Yup! Audi has done it again. Yet another facelift in the name of an all new model. I wasnt expecting any drastic changes, but this is a bit too much of the family look thingy! Especially considering the striking similarity to the A3. Atleast A3 customers are going to be happy. I still can't forgive them for ruining that gorgeous A7 sportback facelift with the A6 face. Though it's one of my favorite car brands, this trend just sucks!

Well, things aren't significantly different in the other German stables either. Although the C would easily be my pick in this segment, the upcoming E is just a resized version as well (atleast going by the renderings and spy shots). It's just a matter of time when C, E and S are going to be S, M, L versions of the same car. Atleast the interiors are pretty different in the Mercs. And dont even start me on BMW. I wonder when these Germans are finally going to bid farewell to this family trait nonsense. If it was just the odd grille or DRL design that was similar, it would have been palatable. But the entire lineup of cars being just a copy, crop, paste job?! No thanks!

[The Rationalist]

Audi looks like testing the skills of the uninitiated to find out the differences between the two successive generations of A4. If this was some kind of game, Audi would have won it! Hope this one rides and handles well. The previous A4 gave me such severe motion sickness while seated in the back on a 200 km drive, that I felt pity for the chauffeur driven.

[KARR]

All the brands have their distinct look for examples BMW with the kidney grille and hoffmeister kink, the shape of the doors etc. So there is only a limited amount of ways you can design them. That being said I really don't like how companies are just scaling models up or down and keeping the looks exactly the same. The new C is a shrunken version of the S and the new A4 looks like the enlarged version of the A3.

[drive2eternity]

Going by the posts in this thread, I see quite a few people do not like the A4 because it looks similar to the A3. But, then A3 is itself a looker. And to add to that the family look which almost all manufacturers are bringing to their stable, this isn't a bad thing.

I, too liked the new A4. The instrument cluster seems to get an LCD display which can be changed to maps, dials + maps, or just regular dials based on the driver's choice. Neat!

But the popped out screen looks fragile.

[Arjun Reddy]

Originally Posted by das_treiber

Pretty detailed video on the 2016 A4

Looks decent!

That was a pretty laborious. Uncontrol. Anyway it atleast gave us a pretty good close up view of what we can expect. Audi concentrates too much on their lighting. Wish they would do the same else where on the design. Though it is a timeless design it's getting a little stale.
The interiors a a notch up. Space seems to be better. The black interiors look good. Does the MMI screen retract? Don't think so. It looks pretty horrible. So much stuff on the option list. Looks like it's going to breach 60 lakhs on road India for the fully loaded one.lol.

[Vishal.R]

Haven't these "next generation" designs become too predictable?

a.) Make headlamps sharper.
b.) Make front grill bigger.

I was looking at next generation Toyota Land Cruiser thread (http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/intern...cs-leaked.html), there also seems like same "formula" is applied.

One more example is Ford Endeavour.

[ajmat]

Originally Posted by GTO

I'm going against the tide, but I LOVE the new A4. Would any day pick it up over the quirky C-Class. Clean, timeless & proportionate - just how German cars ought to be . The thought of a car with this styling & a 6-cylinder engine in my garage makes me drool.
l .

Actually, the C's quirkiness is mainly due to the jacked up ride height. Add to that white paint and it looks pretty staid. However, the same car lowered in dark metallic colours which I saw in Turkey and the UK, looks good.

I feel for the segment, people want to see some major evolution. Am sure the A$ will be more superior to drive than before but it needs to look a bit more "different". Comment is as applicable to the new 7 and new Passat

However, it might be more desirable when viewing in the metal. Again new Passat is boring even though it is touted as the segment leader

[avira_tk]

The car doesn't see much increase in cabin space, I saw a promoted video by a UK publication and despite all the VAG marketing money, not a word was said about interior space, usually manufacturers scream 2mm increase in leg room, 3.5mm increase in shoulder room and 3mm increase in head room at every given opportunity.

The interiors are great, however with the current C, the dated interiors complaint is history. Audi has evolved while Benz has simply shown every one else how to do interiors going forward. The C class is quirky becase as ajmat said the ride height is upped for domestic market cars. Benz knows the Indian conditions quite well, low slung cars that scrape too often develop a bad reputation for poor ground clearance, which is an important consideration for any customer outside the metro regions, where most of the new customers are from.

[vasudeva]

I saw roughly the same dashboard style in Altis last week. This style needs to be designed properly and at least in my opinion, Toyota did not get it right with Altis. Too many grains on the dash and somehow the whole thing did not seem even reasonably tolerable to me.

[ramb]

Looks like the 3 and C class are going laughf at the new A4 . The side profile looks dated and no match to the other Gremans. Not sure if the blue and yellow colours are the right choice to showcase the A4.
On a side note: my relative bought the face lifted jetta and the rear resembles the A3. Audi might find it difficult to convience people to move to this brand when the same features(ala design) is available in volkswagen(read jetta) for 10 lakhs lesser price. Not sure what Audis intentions are when the company is ownec by Volkswagen. There should be some something to differentiate between volkswagen cars and A3 A3.

[GKR9900]

Originally Posted by ramb

Audi might find it difficult to convience people to move to this brand when the same features(ala design) is available in volkswagen(read jetta) for 10 lakhs lesser price. Not sure what Audis intentions are when the company is ownec by Volkswagen. There should be some something to differentiate between volkswagen cars and A3.

+1 to that. Although Audi has flourished under the VW group, I don't quite get them when it comes to design. As if all Audis looking alike isn't bad enough, VW has started to make their cars look similar to Audi as well. I for one, still loves the B8 A4 over the present one. It was so wonderfully simple, yet elegant, a timeless design. Even the LED DRLs were cool, not the fancy swoopy ones we find on the present Audis.

And then came along VW infusing some of the Audi design elements into their stable. It was ok at first. Of course, a customer wouldn't mind his humble Jetta/Passat look similar to an Audi. But overtime, it gets pretty boring. I wonder how a prospective A4 customer will feel like if and when he decides to upgrade to another Audi 5-6 years later:

"Hmmm...which one should I go for? The new A4 with 1 inch more leg room than my current A4, or the A6 with 2 inches more.

Nah! I might as well go with the new A3! They all look the same anyway. It's not like I'm getting any longer! "

It feels kinda weird when choosing a car within a brand more or less revolves around space concerns only!

The bottom line is that each model should have a certain uniqueness attached to it. Now come on Audi, how hard can that be for a manufacturer that's more than 100 years old?!!

[vineethvazhayil]

Here are some video impressions from Auto Express - seems like the improvements are quantum and not just slight increments.

Auto Express - 2016 Audi A4 first impressions

[lillios]

Other than Audi fan boys I don't see many takers for this car. What was Audi thinking the new C class and the 3 series was already launched so they knew what they were competing against. other than the driver side LCD display nothing else impressed me. Its also going to face stiff competition from new Jaguar XE which has already impressed lot of journalist in its ride quality and handling.