Now it’s Audi’s turn to send us to sleep: The new Audi A8

Oh dear, oh dear, just a few days after we were left yawning at BMW’s new 5-series’ very derivative styling (more so than they’ve ever done in the past, the Bavarians had simply taken the model lower in the range and made it bigger), we get news from Miami that Audi has just unveiled the new A8.

Now, what BMW does with its 5-series, we can’t say we care about much. With the notable exception of the M5, nothing about the 5-series ever really blew our skirt up. But Audi and the A8, that’s a different matter. We’re riled.

Audi’s a brand we have a lot of affinity for here at The Prodigal Guide. If you’ll allow us to get a little pretentious for a minute, we’d say that we associate with Audi’s brand values. They genuinely mean something to us.  ”Vorsprung durch Technik” – progress through technology – perfectly embodies how we feel about car design, indeed design in general. The glitz and the chintz have never interested us. What appeals to us is objects that do they job better than any others. Typically, we find those objects are also the ones that look the best.

Like the Breilting slogan goes: “A beautiful plane is a plane that flies well”. For the most part Audi have always lived up to this. In an age where most car manufacturers – and indeed some previously untouchable watch manufacturers – have felt the need to bling up their ranges, Audi has resolutely continued to churn out designs that epitomise stylish understatement.

And no car better embodies the pinnacle of this approach than the previous generation S8. A Lamborghini V10 in the body of the most discrete luxury German saloon you could buy? That’s a truly Prodigal car that remains on our shopping list.

So what’s wrong with the new A8? Well nothing per se, just like there’s nothing wrong with the current A6 or A4. It’s just that there’s nothing special about it anymore either. The previous generation was special. Was it derivative of the other models in the range? Of course, and that’s fine. But it retained its own innimitable character. You’d never mistake it for an A4.

This new model? Well, let’s put it this way, we had to spend a lot of time verifying the pictures we’ve posted here because so many of them looked like an A6 or A4 to us at first.

At the car’s launch in Miami, Audi chairman, Rupert Stadler, said:

The A8 embodies everything that Audi is capable of. It’s the essence of our brand and represents our future. The A8 is the cornerstone in our route to becoming a signature brand that is one of a kind and unmistakeable.

Fine. Then make it look like that, not just like a bigger A4!

So, we salute the previous generation S8 and we welcome this new A8 with the respect you afford an elder member of your family: not so much because of the person they are today but because of the great things they achieved in the past. We just hope it isn’t yet time to think about taking Audi into care.

The photos in this post are from Autocar; please visit their site for more details and photos.