Audi A5

By Robert Cumberford

I like and respect Walter Maria de'Silva, one of the best design leaders working today, but I don't always agree with him. I frankly disliked his Lamborghini Miura Concept last year, and his recent statement that the Audi A5 coupe is "the most beautiful car I have ever designed" definitely put us on separate tracks. It is a very nice car, make no mistake about it, but to me, it is neither as beautiful nor as groundbreaking as the decade-old Alfa Romeo 156 sedans and Sportwagons that de'Silva created. Those cars brought the venerable Milanese firm back to stylistic respectability after the horrors of the broken-back Milano and other misbegotten objects awkwardly carrying the badge that has graced innumerable Mille Miglia, Le Mans, and grand prix winners from the pre-Fiat era.


Never mind. Most beautiful or not, de'Silva indeed created a beautiful car, one that is clearly in the Grand Touring--rather than sport coupe--tradition. I wouldn't want to ride very far in its low-headroom rear seats, but the luxurious cabin is well-finished to Audi standards--that is, better than almost anything costing less than $100,000, whatever its provenance.

Concerning aspects of this design that I do agree with and think important, look at what de'Silva has done with form with respect to the wheels. Audi cars--all but the racers--have for ages had a single-form lower body, a "pontoon" conceptually equivalent to (among others) a 1947 Kaiser, one of Howard "Dutch" Darrin's least-pleasing projects. Wheel and grille openings were cut into that bar-of-soap shape, but the overall form in no way reflected the roundness of wheels. That's true of many cars and explains why there are so many cases of "fenders" being applied to the sides of modern cars such as the Mercedes-Benz S-class.

One reason many people love T-series MGs or Jaguar SS100s is that their fender shapes are obviously derived from their wheels. Pontoon Ferraris that people love almost always have voluptuous organic forms over and around the wheels. De'Silva has brought that sensibility to Audi, first with some creases along the sides of the A3, now adding a sinuous line that moves up and aft from the slightly slanted headlamps' outer corners then drops through the doors and rises over the rear wheels. An ascending wedge line cut into the door gives dynamism to what otherwise would be bland, almost pudgy, body sides. Like most recent Audis, in fact.

European pedestrian safety requirements have caused central nose sections to rise and be rounded, as we see here. What de'Silva has done is make a soft dome of the area behind the grille, then drop the surfaces via a little joggle, then taper them outward and downward to that sinuous line. It all works well to keep the car looking rather lithe, when in fact it is not.

source: automobilemag