You can also look at it this way......the new A8 grille and Lexus spindle-grilles are pretty much the exact opposite. The Lexus grille angles-in; the new A8 grille angles-out.

 

Now I know why the A8 looked so familiar. Hy-Audi

 

Slap 4 rings on the front and there's the next A2 sedan

 

The grilles were copied, but to distinguish who is the laggard, hoods now go to the edge of the vehicle, like they used to. In the BMW world, the roundel goes up in the air when the hood is opened.

 

Yeah Hyundai was keen to copy Audi. They copied some of Audi's interior elements as well.

Form of flattery I guess.

Just waiting until someone copies Lexus' grill lol...

 

Here's the Lincoln droopy butt...

 

I think it looks nice, but it's like most current Audis to me - they look good but don't spark any real emotion one way or the other.

I like the interior other than the touchscreen.

 

Copied, but then made it their own, at this point it appears Audi is now the one copying Hyundai's grill shape/design.

 

You asked, so I am providing examples. Please, let's not get into a "how fugly the Lexus spindle grille is..." discussion. It seems every discussion must descend to that extremely low level and it is getting very old.

These are not real, valid comparisons, since they are Toyota products, but still, the spindle shape is there...






Here are Nissan products. The full spindle grill, with the full chrome outline may not be there but the shape is arguably more visible than they are on the Toyota products.

 

its a pretty car but the A8 has always sort of failed to impress me. like something is missing.

 

wonder how the auto-driving tech works ... you got 3 big screens to play with while the car drives itself lol

 

Pretty sure I read that the head of design for Audi jumped ship for Hyundia/Kia, thus why some Hyundias(especially the Genesis cars IMO) have started to look like Audis.

 

When that original Audi single frame grill was introduced, it caused a lot ripples in the industry and compared to previous Audi's, it was pretty out there. But consumers embraced it and liked it because Audi cars had clean elegant lines yet rather bland fronts. Eventually the single frame started to change because designers felt that a newer edgier face would grab more attention.

The thing to remember with the demographic of who buys the A8, really it's an older crowd that loves elegant clean lines. It really is the younger crowd that wants all the edgy angled "thrashy" designs. So the A8 actually looks good from its side profile but this new evolution of the grill is just so-so and a little too much. It will be interesting to see if it sells well.

As far as the previous post by Sulu about some designs resembling the Lexus spindle. Yes, there is some familiarity but honestly, many cars have lower air intakes and to connect the spindle to those is more an exercise in seeing what you want to see to validate an idea that the spindle is everywhere. Aside from the obvious Toyota gape-mouth spindle-ish designs, there is still a bumper strip dividing the various aspects of the Nissan grills.

Back to the A8. Yes, it's bland because as another thread here states - not everyone wants to make some sort of outrageous wealth-statement about who and what they are in their automotive choice. Sometimes people just want a nice looking car which will age nicely on the styling front. You can't necessarily say that about over the top styling.

 

yeah, it was peter schreyer.

 

seems a long stretch from something like the above to this...