Ringing the changes
Posted by Matt Master at 12:15PM on Tuesday 04 March, 2008 10 Comments
Here's a thought. Audi is the new BMW. And not because Audi is now as classy and desirable as BMW. Nor because it's now as sporty. It's because Audi can now squarely lay claim to the universal truth that unites all BMWs in the eyes of Joe Public. They are driven by tossers.
Once upon a time Audi was the only choice for a certain sort of driver. The one who wanted to have a top-notch piece of machinery that managed to avoid the sort of negative associations that are normally fitted as standard to anything expensive and German.
Discreetly styled, front- or four-wheel drive, these were sensible cars for sensible people. Then the TT appeared, targeting a new, flashier demographic. The sort of people who want to make a statement with their choice of car. Estate agents. IT recruitment consultants. Choose your own collective noun.
Now things are getting out of hand. The RS4, once a sleeper if you ever saw one, is more showy than an M3, and the R8 has launched Audi into footballer territory, bringing with it the material aspirations of a million slack-jawed Stella drinkers. No longer do they all want to own a Ferrari because some semi-literate dipshit under an Alice band has one. Now they all want a piece of Audi. That former bastion of middle-class understatement.
Last weekend I saw an S5 being driven round a quiet residential roundabout on its door handles, LED lights ablaze despite the natural assistance of full Ante Meridiem sun. Why didn't you buy the 3.0 TDI, I wondered, and drive it sensibly? Because you are a git.
I have suggested that BMW would always be disadvantaged by the widely held belief that its drivers all needed to be shot. It's a bit depressing to think Audi might be going the same way.
Advertiser links
10 Comments for "Ringing the changes"
POST A COMMENT USING THE FORM BELOW
Comments are now closed for the blog archives.
I don't really get the journalistic opinion that because a car manufacturer starts making cars that perform well, look cool, and are driven by more people, all of a sudden that's a negative thing.
So what if Mr Git himself drives an Audi? Are you not man enough to make a choice entirely independent of what you think others may or may not think of you?
You're absolutely right, but don't underestimate Audi's 'classic' customers. When I trundle down the autobahn doing, oh, 150mph just to find someone flashing his lights at me, it is usually NOT an S-Class nor an M5, but some sales rep in his A6.
So what? What is the matter with that? All brand demographics have shifted compared to the last 15 years (incidentally, when Audi was just an ill-conceived characterless upmarket VW with 'aero' design, competing with the rest of mundane brands such as Lancia, Rover, Ford, Vauxhall, Saab, Volvo, Alfa, and Peugeot).
Some have gone way upmarket, some have drifted downwards thanks to the booming effect of car fleets which have the ability of degrading a brand image.
It is not sad, it is just evolution. At some point, "zee germans" will have become as mundane as, say, a Citroen. When they will not be an statement, just "yet another car".
Remember that Audi is -was- as artificial as a brand as Lexus.
That famous "black little dress", regarding car brands, is still held by Honda and Volvo, in my opinion. Both of them are just right almost everywhere, where more glitzy cars show off too much, or where more humble cars dismay.
I must say to an extent I agree, I live in Plymouth, a place not suave enough to be overrun with Ferrari's or clogged up with chelsea tractor's (however it is getting that way).
Recently, I have noticed the abundant amount of new Audi TT's around on their 57 plates, as well as RS4's, A4's and S5's, and the sad thing is, they are all driven by the kind of drivers that Jeremy Clarkson points out and label's as the BMW M3 drivers, estate agents, IT technicians and the sort, all driving around like there Lewis Hamilton.
It disgusts me how such a beautiful car as the R8 (and the TT) are being dragged down to BMW status!!
Oh please say it isn't so! OK, the TT is driven by people for whom I have declined to choose a collective noun (*cough*posermobile*cough*) and that's a fair observation, but that they're now moving into Brash Motoring W****r territory is truly sad.
Audi make good cars that don't need to shout about it. Thing is, until recently, they never looked that remarkable. Suddenly they've started blinging them up a bit -and even to my jaded and rheumy eye, the R8 is a thing of beauty - and now every fake-Burberry-capped tosspot is drooling. Make it stop!
An RS4 more showy than an M3? Is there a bonnet bulge and ducts in the RS4's hood that I'm missing?
Why are we getting so obsessed with what kind of people drive BMWs, Audis and Mercs? Let them get on with it, and if we "normal" citizens feel like owning one, so what?
It's more to do with the way you drive your car of choice, than the choice itself.
Let's forget the Germans for a while and start lauding the the arrival of more interesting cars such as, oh yes, the Jag XF
Matt, had you been to the pub before you wrote this? The Quattro coupe was insane and chavved up, I think the TT's mainstream success only added to their rapid silver-car expansion.
The iPod listening, Guardian-reading elitists, which you so eloquently call "understated middle class" drive VW Touareg's and Lexus RX hybrids these days, and that's probably a good thing. Give me an A6 anyday.
I must say that I agree with Matt here. They used to be understated cars, driven by nice people, but ever since their designers got the Tomb Raider syndrome("where is that bigger button??"), they have lost much of their elegance to bling, with this effect on their drivers.
It was best explained in one of the previous issues: Audis nowadays shout: "I'm better than you, get out of my way!".
Could it be that there just isn't a market for understated, well-equipped, bulletproof autobahnstormers?
On the money I reckon, but wrong comparison: Audi's brand trajectory more closely resembles that of Mercedes Benz. MB was once the home of beautifully engineered but resolutely sober bourgeois saloons, and is now making fussily styled, incoherent bling-mobiles covering a welter of incomprehensible niches.
I suspect this sort of thing better suits a brasher, heavier, German sense of what is considered premium and, more importantly, that of America. Luckily we have the understated good taste of Jagu...oh. Oh dear.