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Audi previews sleek crossover concept ahead of Beijing debut

With the Beijing Motor Show approaching just a couple of weeks down the road, automakers have begun announcing the concept cars they have in store. Nissan has a new sedan concept coming, Lexus will reveal the production NX crossover and Citroën has a tempting sports sedan concept lined up for the Chinese auto expo. And now Audi has hinted at what it has in store.
Revealing only a trio of renderings with no details to accompany them so far, Audi appears to have a new crossover concept in the works. Referred to only as the Audi Showcar Beijing 2014, the brief calls for a five-door crossover with a rather coupe-like roofline, rugged lower body cladding and a flexible cabin with quad bucket seats.
The form bears telltale similarities to the new TT, suggesting that this concept could be a further evolution of the Allroad Shooting Brake concept that Audi revealed in Detroit. If put into production, we could see it wearing the Q4 badge, giving Ingolstadt a rival to the likes of the BMW X4, Porsche Macan and Range Rover Evoque. However, until Audi tells us otherwise, that's all speculation...

2017 Audi A4 Deep Dive

Unchanged. Plain. Boring. These words have been used to describe the new 2017 Audi A4, but they all miss the point entirely. Yes, the design of the new A4 is evolutionary, rather than a ground-up restyling. But as they say in ancient High German, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Of course, if you're at all interested in the 2017 Audi A4, you've probably read all about it in the official press release a few days ago. So we'll cut to the chase and tell you the bits you don't already know: the American-market details. We spent a day at Audi headquarters in Ingolstadt last week finding out the latest and poking around the A4 in the metal. The new A4 is wider, longer, and roomier than before. The lines are crisper and sharper, but yes, the proportions have remained very similar. That was done on purpose, thoughtfully. Not out of laziness. Stand any two sequential generations of Porsche 911 next to each other and you'll find they are rather similar. And yes, people do complain about that. But they also complain about the property tax rate on their third home in Monaco. That familiar-looking body gets a shockingly low coefficient of drag of just 0.23. The improvements in drag come from fine-tuning details down to the placement of the side mirror (now on the door, rather than the triangular window panel) and the contouring of the inner edge of the side mirror, which gets little vortex generating bumps to improve the turbulent airflow in that area, reducing drag. Attention to detail and refinement of a successful design – not boring, lazy repetition. Another notable departure in the styling of the new A4 is equally subtle, but even more significant from a precision manufacturing perspective: the hood has no cut lines on its upper surface. Instead, the hood now wraps around the tops of the fenders, the cut line integrating with the sharp crease that runs down the entire body side. The creation of this cut line requires extremely tight manufacturing tolerances to enable the precise alignment of the hood and fender gap with the stamped-in crease in the door panel; misalignment would be obvious and catastrophic to the clean, simple design's flow. Now, let's rip off this Band-Aid: no, we won't be getting the Avant. Why? Because no one buys it, vociferous vocalizations on the Internet aside.

Audi TT Offroad concept packs 408 hybrid horsepower, yet returns 123 mpg

Audi took the wraps of its TT Offroad Concept at the Beijing Motor Show, after teasing us with sketches earlier this month. "The Audi TT offroad concept provides a glimpse of how we might imagine a new model in the future TT family," says Prof. Dr. Ulrich Hackenberg, Member of the Board of Management for Technical Development. "It combines the sporty genes of the TT with the strengths of a compact Audi SUV."
The latest in Audi's eTron show cars reminds us an awful lot of the the Audi Allroad Shooting Brake concept that debuted a few months ago at the Detroit Auto Show. In addition to very similar physical appearances, the two share the same plug-in hybrid propulsion systems (the "plug-in" part is a bit misleading, as the concept simply needs to be parked over an inductive pad to take advantage of Audi Wireless Charging technology).
Proving that hybrid power never has to be a compromise, the TT Offroad Concept packs a 292 horsepower turbocharged 2.0-liter four-cylinder under the hood. The combustion engine is assisted by two electric motors (rated at 40 kW at the front and 85 kW at the rear) to provide a total system output of 408 horsepower and nearly 480 pound-feet of torque. With all-wheel drive, the concept hits 60 mph in 5.2 seconds and tops out at 155 mph - while returning a provisional fuel efficiency of 123 miles per gallon equivalent.