We Drove the Most Important Audi in 20 Years Meet the Concept C

Hi there! You're watching Motor Trend, I'm Johnny Lieberman, and this is the Audi Concept C. And I'm arguing this is the most important vehicle Audi's done in approximately the last two decades. And we'll get to exactly why that is in a second, but a little bit about the car first. We don't know very much. We do know this thing is electric, it's rear wheel drive, it's got one motor, it makes over 500 horsepower, we don't know exactly how much. We know it has an 800 volt battery architecture, we don't know the size of the battery, we don't even know the size of the car. It looks to be a little bit bigger than the first generation R8, maybe about the same size as the R8 that just went out of production. And that's kind of it. That said, this car has to do two very key things. Number one, premium brands need a halo car. You just have to do it. If somebody buys an A3, you want them to aspire to something. Why are they buying the A3 over the competition? Because one day, when they make it, they can get into this, or get into what used to be the R8. Now there's a Void. Also, Audi has this incredible sporting heritage. Going back to the 30s with the Silver Arrow right here. They were dominant at Le Mans for more than a decade. Next year they're going into F1, so they need to have those sporty credentials for real. But number two, and much more importantly, this car, this design language, it has to reestablish Audi as a global design leader, both inside the car and out. So can the Type C accomplish either of those two things? That's what we're going to find out. All right, so a bit about the concept C's design. You know, it's a brand new design language, philosophy. It's a rebirth of the brand for Audi. And you know, there's some pretty obvious things. Like it's called the concept C. Hey, look at this. Here's a 1936 Type C, or a recreation they built in 1998. But close enough. And if you look at the front of the car, you can definitely see where that size and shape of the grille comes from. If you look at, I think, if you look at right here, these kind of intake slats, well boy, they kind of are about the same size as the tires here. There's a similarity. There's a resemblance. And if you think about Audi from like, you know, 1936 to about 1999, they were known for many things. Quattro, Pikes Peak, rallying. They weren't really known for making beautiful cars. It wasn't until this thing, the Audi TT, designed by Freeman Thomas, sketched on a little thing sitting on his desk. It was so good looking, that image was taken to, you know, Chairman Piak, who said, greenlight it. Let's do it. But this really established Audi as like leading in design. This was just, you know, small cars never looked that good. This looked that good. Plus, the interior, baseball stitching on the seats, real aluminum switchgear, it just, it was incredible for anything that was based on a Volkswagen Golf architecture. And then came the R8, and this really kind of just shoved Audi to the front of the pack. This big grille was so influential that eventually, you know, every car wound up looking like this. It had a gasoline engine. Even Toyotas had massive grilles that were this wide. And it all came out of here. The LED headlights were here. And this car just really put Audi on the map as something like, hey, you know what, instead of that Ferrari, I'm going to look at an R8. And it has really been a long time since Audi was kind of just considered a global design leader. That car is looking to change all that. And once again, I mean, this is a rebirth of what, you know, Audi was always known for. And that is just like, you know, breathtaking design, which is both simple but also very technical. So you have these, you know, simple, beautiful shapes. But then you look at like this corner here, like very few companies could actually put that into production. Audi is one of a handful. It's smooth. It's sexy. It's voluptuous. It's awesome. And then you get to the rear. And I'm just gaga for the rear end of this car because it's both classic, modern. You see the heritage back to the Type C race car from the 30s. You see the TT. You see the R8. It's all there. And what I'm hearing is that starting in 2027, every Audi is going to have this design language, not only on the exterior, but also inside the car. Let's go take a look at that. What Audi has done with this interior is really cool. They came to the conclusion that, yes, touchscreens are inevitable. You got to have them. The amount of stuff cars can do, the amount of capability that can be added via software update, you got to have a configurable touchscreen for that. It's a very functional touchscreen, but you don't have to look at it all the time. You simply hit a switch, boom, it goes away. Also, remember I said click of a control. All the switchgear here, first of all, it's all aluminum. There's no plastic here, but it all makes the same clicking noise, which is really cool. We saw aluminum switchgear for the first time on the Audi TT Concept. They put it into production cars where every piece of thing you touched or pulled or clicked made the same noise. That's great. It's nice to see them getting back to that instead of having the clicky touchscreens, which no one really wanted that. The other thing they've done, which I think is great, is they've banished plastic from inside the cabin. They're using fabrics here on the doors. Anything that looks like aluminum is aluminum, like the handle to open the door here. The carpets are actually real shag carpets. I don't know if that'll make production, but it's very cool. The dash here, it's forged or chopped carbon fiber, similar to what Lamborghini uses. The top of the dash, it's this kind of like cool rubber neoprene elephant skin, dolphin skin kind of thing, but it's not like a plastic. It's not a greasy, hard plastic. Now, are they going to do this for every car in the range? No. There's a certain price point, which when you fall below that, there will be some plastic instead of carbon fiber. But for the premium stuff, the interiors are going to be like this, which I think is fantastic. I really feel, especially when we see the production version of this, that if they can maintain what they're doing here in the concept C, this sort of interior spread out across the range is really going to put Audi back in front when it comes to car interiors. And now we drive. Okay, well, first thing I'm noticing is that there is a sound. It's not like, you know, the rumble of an engine, but it does make some noise. I don't know if that's... Actually, there's no speakers, so it's coming from the motor. Second thing I'm noticing is this feels finished. This doesn't feel like a prototype. Steering is really good. And look, I mean, except for with the exception of that one R8, like we've wanted a rear-wheel drive two-door Audi forever, and this is it. This is great. More than 500 horsepower on just the rear axle. They're not working... Well, they're saying they're not working on an all-wheel drive version yet. Of course, they will. Quattro is an Audi brand value, but for now, their priority is this rear-drive one. And the steering is incredibly direct. The Audi PR guy was actually yelling at me earlier saying, like, oh, you know, you always bash Audis because they're always, like, front-heavy. Well, this is not front-heavy. This is a very, very linear steering, really smooth-feeling car, actually. It's very quick. It's a very quick car. They said don't push it, and I was at about, I don't know, about, like, a third of the way through the throttle pedal there, and I was not even close to wide-open throttle and not even close to full acceleration. This thing scoots, so can't wait to actually, you know, get on a larger road with, you know, less tractors on it and really open this thing up because this is going to be a great driving car. I can tell. It's not the first-generation TT, which was, like, a very sporty-looking car that wasn't that sporty. It's not that. It's not a Volkswagen Golf with a cool body on it. This is a sports car that is previewing kind of the rebirth of the Audi brand. Everything we're seeing here, the shape, the form factor, this sort of interior, this is going to be on all future Audis starting around 2027, and, like, what a great jumping-off point. So does it, you know, 100% plug the hole left by the R8? No, but at 500 horsepower or more, it's already, you know, probably there in terms of performance, and again, this is just the rear driver. This isn't the inevitable all-wheel-drive one that will happen that'll, you know, who knows how much power, who knows how quick it'll go. So Audi is, they've got something very cool here with the Concept C. So yeah, you know, wrapping this up, I'm going to say that this car really surprised me, and I think the biggest surprise is I just, I don't know why, based on nothing, I really made the assumption that this was, like, the rebirth of the TT because it's such, like, it's just, it has, again, not the form factor that the original Freeman Thomas-designed TT had, but I don't know, it just kind of looked closer to that than the R8, but I'm telling you, the performance of this thing, and I say this, I drove an R8 about three hours ago, first-gen R8, this blows it out of the water in terms of acceleration, but also, honestly, the steering's better. This is really good. I just wasn't expecting this at all. I'm thoroughly impressed. What do I think? I think the future of Audi's pretty bright. I mean, this interior is magnificent. I love the way this thing looked in photos. It's actually much better in sunlight. You really just see, like, it's quite dimensional, which is a bizarre thing to say, but in photos, everything is flattened out and two-dimensional. This, there's more curves in reality than you see on your phone screen. It really does pop, and yeah, I'm excited to see where this brand is headed, because, you know, 20 years ago, Audi kind of revolutionized car design, right? They put in all these cool, like, haptic switches, and all the buttons made the same noise. First time anyone had ever done that, and then, you know, the big grill design language, you know, Toyota's still using it. They changed the shape of the automotive industry, and I think the Concept C previews, well, the rebirth of that. Anyways, thank you very much for watching. Johnny Lieberman, signing off from Motor Trend, and we'll catch you on the next one.