Audi admits its cars look too 'busy' – and vows to make them cleaner and simpler

► Audi design admits its cars look too busy
► Clean, functional designs of the 60s have been lost
► Exterior designer Gary Telaak hints at new, cleaner direction

We’re not saying anything controversial here when we say that Audi design has become more complex and less easy on the eye.

Audi, which has just acknowledged 60 years of what it considers to be the brand it is today, has moved from functional and cleanly designed cars like the original 80 and 100 to ones that are beset with creases, vents and aggression.

We are, however, starting to see signs that the brand will step away from this design complexity with future models with new chief creative officer Massimo Frascella at the helm.

Frascella has been in his role at Audi for a year now – taking over from Marc Lichte. Before Audi, he designed the current Land Rover Defender, as well as the latest Range Rover and Range Rover Sport models; all clean and/or functional designs that look remarkably like the brand they’re from, without being over the top. Something Audi arguably needs right now.

At an event celebrating this 60-year period of modern-day Audi design at a Frank Gehry-designed hotel in northern Spain, exterior designer Gary Telaak gives us a walkthrough of some of the brand’s key models. Among those models are an 80 and a 100, as well as an Ur Quattro and a few RS models – all from the Audi UK heritage fleet. There are discussions of cleanliness, function, details like the Singleframe grille evolving from being something that originally marked the Audi V8 model becoming a signature of the brand’s cars.

After Telaak has given us his walkthrough, the one that’s become a magnet to him while at the event is the RS2 Avant – the Porsche-enhanced fire-breather of an estate car that kicked off the Audi RS brand. He’s desperate to drive it, having never had the chance prior – so CAR hitches a ride with him. ‘I’m freaking out right now,’ he beams as we climb in. ‘This location? These cars? That’s my life!’

This RS2, like many of the cars (RS or otherwise) in the line-up on the event, are subtle but purposeful. No overdone creases, no oversized vents and no aggressive faces. Not a busy or complicated design. While we drive, Telaak explains to us the design evolution; ‘it’s sometimes technology that can make things, as you say, ‘busier.’ For example, we are regularly showing details like the quattro blisters to emphasise four-wheel drive.’

‘Right now, we’re also playing a lot with light and shadow,’ he adds. ‘It’s important if you want to express specific proportions and make the car look slimmer. Sometimes the package you’re working with doesn’t give you what you want to have in terms of its proportions.

‘We use blisters and undercuts to break the surface, break the volume and create a proportion we want to see. We have probably reached the peak of this sort [of design],’ Telaak adds.

So, does that mean Audi designs will become simpler, stepping away from this aggressive and over-styled look? He simply smirks, and says: ‘possibly.’ Indeed, CAR understands that we’ll see a preview of Audi’s future design direction via a show car at the 2025 Munich motor show.

‘This is, I think, our first point of attention: to treat the skin, not to overload it and leave out what is not necessary,’ Telaak adds.

Being in the RS2 is another case in point, as Audi RS cars were always designed to be sleepers. You had to know an RS car when you looked one, with cars like this and the B5 RS4 showing very few clues to the performance that lied beneath the surface. Now, though, RS models are extreme, aggressive and showy in their designs. Telaak agrees as he carves up the mountain roads in the RS2; ‘just look at the RS6,’ he says.

But he also adds that treading that line between design simplicity and aggression is an even thinner one with RS models. ‘You have to respect the customers,’ he says, ‘and many RS customers expect this [aggression]. You will always be torn between those two extremes, and with RS you have to find the right balance. RS is a community, and it has evolved into something more extreme and radical in terms of expression.’

What should Audi bring back to its design, then? ‘I think the logic of it,’ Telaak responds. ‘Just take the normal A3 as an example. The architecture and structure of the car is all there, with its massive C-pillar.. that is distinctively an A3. You recognise it immediately. It has creases, but not many. This is very Audi.’

Jake has been an automotive journalist since 2015, joining CAR as Staff Writer in 2017. With a decade of car news and reviews writing under his belt, he became CAR's Deputy News Editor in 2020 and then News Editor in 2025. Jake's day-to-day role includes co-ordinating CAR's news content across its print, digital and social media channels. When he's not out interviewing an executive, driving a new car for review or on a photoshoot for a CAR feature, he's usually found geeking out on the latest video game, buying yet another pair of wildly-coloured trainers or figuring out where he can put another car-shaped Lego set in his already-full house.

By Jake Groves

CAR's news editor; gamer, trainer freak and serial Lego-ist