The Concept C Is the All-Electric Sports Car Kick-Starting Audi’s Design Future

Car companies love a mission statement. With the arrival of the Concept C, Audi’s new one is crystal clear: “radical simplicity.” An all-electric two-seater with a retractable folding hard top, the Concept C is a “progressive interpretation” of the company’s legacy, says Audi—and it's not hard to see that the TT has factored pretty heavily in that.

But as you pick your way through the messaging—key words here are precision and clarity, as well as a reemphasis on our old friend “Vorsprung durch Technik”—this feels like a substantial reset after a period of aesthetic drift. This isn’t just a piece of conceptual eye candy, then: It’s Audi engaging combat mode in an industry currently beset with challenges.

“Our vision is a call to action for the whole company—and is essential for making our brand truly distinctive once again,” Audi chief creative officer Massimo Frascella explains. “It is the philosophy behind every decision we make, and we aim to apply its principles across the entire organization. We call it ‘the Radical Next.’”

Let’s start with the car itself. Although the e-tron GT set the bar high, Audi’s model range has been light on coherence and drama. The Concept C isn’t quite a first-principles machine, but it definitely strips things back and seeks to stoke some good old-fashioned flames of desire. It’s a terrific looking thing in the flesh: stocky, solid, and charismatic. Audi CEO Gernot Döllner, in charge for exactly two years, personally pushed for a new sports car; Frascella used it to push the boundaries in terms of design creativity and manufacturing technique.

It’s also one for marque historians: Although there’s nothing explicitly retro here, the 1930s Auto Union Type C Grand Prix car, the early-noughties Rosemeyer concept, and more pertinently the original TT are all in the mix, as is Bauhaus and German modernism.

Frascella, it should be noted, is an Italian who rose to prominence as head of design at Jaguar Land Rover, and he is credited with the current Range Rover, a universally admired vehicle (though he also worked on the rather more polarizing Jaguar Type 00.) A lack of adornment and commitment to what car designers are wont to call “monolithic” surfaces are evidently two of his trademarks.

That much is certainly apparent here. The Concept C’s taut, machined look suggests something carved from a giant billet of aluminum, and there’s a strong new vertical front-grille shape with a slim but powerful light signature that echoes the four-ring logo. We reckon it’s best appreciated from an elevated position above the rear three-quarters, though. There’s no rear window, minimal decoration, and slender LED taillights, with three slats in the rear deck to suggest a more emotionally charged, mid-engined configuration. We’re told the windowless, slatted look will make production, and the new car is slated to arrive in 2027.

As it happens, the battery—about which Audi has yet to confirm any details—is mounted in the middle. “Mid-energy,” they call it, in the absence of a traditional combustion engine. Although Audi is hedging its bets with a mix of combustion, plug-in hybrids, and EVs elsewhere in the range, the Concept C is strictly electric only. It shares its platform with the next-gen—and delayed—Porsche 718 Cayman and Boxster models.

If you think there’s a new brutalism at work in automotive design—see also the Jag Type 00 and the recent Bentley EXP 15 concepts—the Audi Concept C deepens that thesis. But at least those ideas are part of its brand and national DNA. (It’s also a design philosophy that can be applied globally—even as the company prepares to launch its AUDI sub-brand joint venture with SAIC in China.)

The interior doubles down on that. It’s architectural in look and feel, with an emphasis on physical interaction and genuine tactility. The door handles have the heft of struts on a Tokyo suspension bridge. There’s real metal in here and satisfying haptic response. If Audi has overdone the touchscreens on its current production cars, that’s set to change. In here, at least, it really does feel like first principles: There’s an instrument display ahead of the driver, cradled in a gently curved binnacle, anodized aluminum controls on the steering wheel—round not a yoke—and a 10.4-inch central screen that folds away to reveal a dashboard that’s completely devoid of frippery.

Could the big-screen tyranny be at an end? Climate control is done by a gently back-lit little strip rather than the separate display found on current Audis. The company looks to be embracing BMW's preference for “shy tech.”

“There is always more of everything in the world,” Frascella tells WIRED. “But there comes a point where maybe more is not the answer. We need to take control of what we do, who we are, and what we want. For us, technology is a means to progress, not an end in itself. We neither want to hide it or show it off—it should inspire without being dominant.”

He continues: “We want to focus on what really matters, but minimalism can be misinterpreted. If a line on a car brings a value to the design or the experience then there is a place for those elements. But we don’t want to go beyond that.”

While Frascella confirms that this new approach applies to anything Audi does next, from a two-seater sports car to an SUV, he denies that Audi’s sprawling model range has led to confusion, in terms of brand identity and amongst buyers. “I wouldn’t say there is confusion,” he says. “I’d say that historically, as an industry, this is an appropriate time to reflect on things and examine where we’re going.”

As for the reasons behind Audi's new, more simplistic path, Döllner tells WIRED, “We’ve spent two years working on the new design strategy, on how to make Audi future-proof, and how to take the next big steps with the organization. The industry has learned a lot this past few years. We did too much of everything in the past, too many derivatives, too many options for the customers. We will simplify that, and maybe have more character to our offer structure.”

The strive for simplicity doesn't stop there. “Inside the cars, we need more interaction with physical controls, but where we want to go a different way is in the amount of information we display in the car,” Döllner says. “We believe that a reduction in the focus on the central display or ‘information-on-demand’ is the correct way to go. Things are currently too complicated—in every sense.”