Audi Concept C is a bold preview of a future sports car as well as a sharp distinctive forthcoming change in design language
Define yourself or die. That's the kind of era it feels like the motoring world is enduring at the moment. Myriad market headwinds are conspiring to flay the thick skin of profitability from once rocksteady industry titans. Audi is a prime example and is in distinct need of a line in the sand - a new North Star toward which it can walk with confidence. Placed in the sky by new Audi chief design officer Massimo Frascella, this is it, the Audi Concept C.
This is our first taste of the sort of car Audi one day hopes to replace its R8 and TT supercar and sports coupe duo with. For the moment it's the poster child for a refreshed design direction that will define Audi's make-or-break next-generation product. This is a pivotal moment in Audi's history and as such, Concept C is as important in Ingolstadt as Type 00 is in Coventry.
It comes off the back of a haphazard few years for Audi, that followed two decades of unprecedented brand building, textbook market maneuvers and the monstrous profitability that resulted. In recent times it's been all strategic indecision, indistinct product and apparently ill-informed bets that just didn't pay off.
In 2025 an Audi that doesn't know exactly what should power its cars, at times what its cars should even be called and what its customers actually want, needs course correction. Maybe that's what Concept C stands for?
It's definitely a statement - one as impactful, if not immediately in a positive sense, as the original TT. But even over the course of writing this, the more I go through the images, the more I like it.
There's definitely a bit of R8 in the silhouette of the Audi Concept C, even if the rest of its design philosophy calls upon other moments in Audi's storied history, with 'radical simplicity' the mantra that underscores it - Frascella comes from JLR where he was responsible for the monolithic current Range Rover, and it shows. Simplicity is a bold thing to go for when the job is to stand out in an enormous car market that's exploding with new players. That's where influences from Audi's history, something no new name can manufacture, come in.