Design has always played a strategic role when trying to gain a foothold in a new market segment. But if you’re talking about the B segment (or A0 in Germany), and the premium portion of that segment to boot – which has been dominated for years by the Mini – then the designer’s job is even more challenging. Which, however, is precisely what makes it so much more exciting.

“Our number one goal was to create a one-hundred percent Audi”, begins Volkswagen Group design chief Walter de’ Silva, making no secret of his creative independence from the directives of the group’s marketing division. “My role is to ensure that each brand has its own identity and strength, and to create trends. So we have always avoided the idea of making a Mini-killer, while also being careful not to go too far in the opposite direction – pursuing originality at all costs and ending up in the realms of the bizarre. We began by considering different scenarios, our history and typical Audi aesthetic values.”

In the four-ringed brand’s past, however, there is no historical reference for a small hatchback, so the designers had to embody Audi DNA in a completely unfamiliar object. As Audi Group design director Wolfgang Egger explains: “We conducted a great deal of research into the architecture, as the very architecture itself would have to express a very individual interpretation of the genre, setting the car apart from other conventional hatchbacks. We started off from typically Audi sporty concepts, which are evident in the configuration of the roof: it is low and compact, sits on a broad shoulder and seems shifted towards the rear like a weight.”

(The article continues in Auto & Design n. 183, page 16)