Audi design head Stefan Sielaff thinks designers should go out of the studio. “Travel,” he says. “Go to other countries, Italy for example for visiting the Milan furniture shows or Singapore for the fashion shows or China making strong statements now or Scandinavia, a place to go, where we draw a lot of inspiration.”
“Aston Martin are doing very emotional products, with good design quality. Land Rover have an authenticity and clean design language. But if you look at BMW and Mercedes, they’re doing baroque cars and baroque interiors, very heavy and over-decorated. I don’t want a heavy or bulky interior”.
“When you have a sporty brand like Audi, you cannot do everything. We focus on sportiness, so our suspensions are a bit harder than they might be in cars that focus more on comfort. We definitely will not do couch-potato soft cars. That’s for sure.
“I want a nice product but we have to earn money with our product. The customer is very intelligent and able to see if the company or the brand has spent a certain amount of money on the product or if it is just playing a game with the customer. Our president, Rupert Stadler, has a finance background but understands that if we save money on design, it hurts the company.”