Interview with Audi Design Chief

Detroit News managed to get hold of Audi's chief of design Stefan Sielaff for an interview. Below is some excerpts from the interview.

Q . Most car designers benchmark Audi. Whom do you benchmark?

A . We look at what the other high-end manufacturers are doing: Aston Martin, Bentley. Within the VW group, I love Bentley and Lamborghini.

Outside the VW group, I have to say Aston Martin. They are doing very emotional products, with good design quality.

Land Rover is also a brand I like. I like the authenticity and clean design language.

If you look at BMW and Mercedes, they're doing baroque cars and baroque interiors, very heavy and overdecorated. I don't want a heavy or bulky interior.

For more of the interview, go here.

Stefan Sielaff was a former interior designer at Mercedes-Benz before jumping over to the Ingolstadt camp in 2006, replacing previous Audi design superstar Walter de'Silva, who has since been promoted to Head of Design for the entire Volkswagen Group.


An interesting excerpt from an interview with Walter de'Silvia by EuropeanCarWeb :
ec: What was your motivation behind the recreation of Audi's corporate face?

Wd'S: I believe it is important to lead with character and emotion, in this case a bold and easily recognizable face. Most iconic cars have at least one clearly identifiable feature. For the Porsche 911 it's not necessarily the front, but its unmistakable silhouette. It is something you can identify at a mere glance. You don't mistake the distinctive grille of a BMW or Alfa Romeo for any other car, and now it's the same for Audi. The single-frame grille is an iconic style element. It provides the personality for the car and for the brand.

ec: We're told that the idea of the single-frame grille came to you while on vacation.

Wd'S:: Yes, I was on holiday and I started drawing. I made a few sketches incorporating the grille, inspired by the original Auto Union cars, and I knew in an instant that this would be the new face of Audi. Not everyone agreed we should make such a drastic change. Comments from the press were not so positive, but now everything is so and Audi now has a very visual and identifiable face. It too will continue to change and evolve.

But what caught my attention the most is the last question :
ec: If you could choose any car to design or redesign, which one would it be?
Wd'S: The Golf. Can you imagine a more important car? The success of the Golf in the past 25 years, the five generations of platform design. It is truly an icon like the Beetle or TT, but even more important in terms of the history and the impact its has made and the millions it has sold.
This will be a challenge, the biggest and most important of my career. And you ask me how I stay motivated?

The current Mk6 Golf is very similar to the previous Mk5 Golf because the main objective for Volkswagen is to rectify the Mk 5's biggest problem - that it costs too much to build. Much of the changes is regarding parts assembly and manufacturing processes of the vehicle. Underneath the Mk 6 skin, many of car's key components were carried over from the previous generation Golf, which is not exactly a bad thing because barring the Ford Focus, the Mk5 Golf is one of the best all rounded cars in recent time.

Keep your fingers crossed, the best Golf is yet to come, if Walter de'Silva manage to find his way around cost conscious VW management (understandable given the current climate).