CarCast+Edmunds - We take a look at the new design direction for BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Audi.

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Hello, welcome to the Advanced Car Cast and Podcast.

I'm Matt, the moderator, DeAndre, here with Alistair Weaver.

How are you?

I'm good, thanks, Matt.

Yeah, fighting a bit of a cold but struggling on, manfully.

That's just because you have kids. I haven't had a cold in like 10 years.

Everybody's just gone back to school and it's just a petri dish.

So the six-year-old got sick, then my three-and-a-half-year-old got sick.

My wife's kind of just about holding on and then this one hour goes,

I don't feel good. I've smashed a bit of me.

I don't get babysitter come in and look after me and feed me

and look after me on the safer. I'm here doing a podcast.

So what can you do?

So if I sound a bit nasally, that's why I'll do my best to muscle through.

Well, thank you. I appreciate that. Glad to have you here.

And stuff going on.

Huge week.

Yeah, just all of a sudden it came up.

I checked a few days ago and I was like, it's boring.

This week, nothing's happening.

But I realized there's shows happening.

There's auto shows happening.

There's announcements being made, just not in my neighborhood.

It was really interesting.

I'm not going to re-litigate the whole idea of the end of the auto show,

but it's the Munich auto show next week.

We've got our head of youth, Steve Yeung, going out there.

But there's really big news from Germany's Big Three

and whether they've had a degree of sort of political pressure

or whatever around the auto show, we've got to make some noise.

But yeah, really big week, because both Mercedes, BMW and Audi

have all basically come out with vehicles that said,

this is what our design language of the future.

And in layman's speak, what that means is we are going to develop

three new models and say, this is what all the cars of the future

are going to look like.

And they do this kind of almost once a generation.

And BMW, Audi and Mercedes have all had this kind of

slightly controversial aesthetic for a few years.

And they brought in, certainly in Audi's case, big name new designer.

And it's like, OK, this is our first effort

at the next generation of cars.

So super interesting to see.

Let's start with BMW.

What do you think?

Why not?

This is the first one.

I'm going to load it up on the screen.

I do apologize, because most people are listening to this

as a podcast, and we're about to talk about design.

So we're going to do our best to explain what we're seeing.

If you're watching on YouTube, you get a better sense of it.

But we're going to do our best to talk you through this.

So BMW, for some time, BMW has been talking about,

what they've been calling the Neuer class,

or new class in English.

So we've seen the last couple of years, concept cars,

prototypes knocking around, which showed off a hint of what was to come.

And the iX3 is the first vehicle to show this off in its full light.

The iX3, which only recently went on sale,

was kind of like halfway house.

Introduced some of the new language, but didn't go the whole way.

The iX3, which is the EV, is the first one, really,

to demonstrate what BMWs of the future will look like.

And it's radically different.

Gone is that sort of humongous grill

that has been a character of every BMW for about the last few years.

It's now much more kind of classical, much smaller kidney grills.

It actually takes it back to more of kind of an 80s aesthetic for me.

Smaller lights, smaller grill, but still very distinctively BMW.

I like it.

So when BMW was getting that very hard edge,

flat panels, harder edges, it looked very sort of stealth bomber-ish.

This is a little bit softer.

You can see some of those hard edges, but now it's sort of in between.

In between the, you know, all the softer edges and the super hard edge.

It's a little bit softer.

So, yes, the front end, much less polarizing.

I'm not going to say everyone's going to love it,

but you maybe just dislike it less.

I think it depends on the perspective.

The shot we've got on screen at the moment is the front three-quarter.

And that to me feels like the sort of the most awkward angle.

I love it from the front on profile.

The rear end is that front end,

which has this kind of like quite hunched nose feel quite sporting.

I think that looks terrific.

We got it on screen there.

And then the rear end is a little bit more generic, but it's clean.

So that's the exterior.

And I think all future BMWs and XX5, et cetera,

will all now echo this language.

And I think they've had to, particularly because this is an EV,

and they're talking about a 400-mile-mile range,

they've had to kind of do a very kind of difficult job,

a fine line between making something that's aerodynamically very efficient,

to make sure you've got strong range,

and actually coming up with something that looks cool and people want to buy.

And I think the IX5, if you look at the wheels,

they're not the most aerodynamic in the world,

but they look, you know, they look cool and very BMW-like.

So I'm excited by it.

And the interior, I know he's flashing up the interior on the screen.

The interior is arguably an even bigger step than the exterior.

And this is where probably the real progress is.

But for those of you just listening,

the interior, it's interesting because in one photo,

the steering wheel looks like it's upside down.

That's the shape of the steering wheel,

where it kind of looks like it would, you know,

it's a little bigger on the bottom than on the top.

But I would say the way they're doing the screen,

so there's a screen in the middle,

and then up along the dash under the windshield,

similar to what Lincoln was doing,

maybe not quite as big of the screen,

like tall of the screen.

But if you think of the new Lincoln Navigator,

their arrangement of the screen sort of in the middle

and then across the dash under the windshield,

that's the configuration.

That's right.

But although what's curious about it,

BMW is calling this panoramic vision,

is it's not a screen.

Actually, what they've done is to paint the bottom of the,

well, it is a screen, but it's the windshield,

the windscreen, if you like.

They painted the bottom of it black,

and they're actually projecting the information

onto the glass.

So if you look at what Lincoln have done,

Lincoln have a very small LED that strip

that basically runs across the cockpit.

Here, BMW is projecting information onto the windshield,

which is kind of cool.

And then you've got a screen that looks

very Tesla-like in the middle.

It's very minimalist.

You've got these all the kind of like weird

sort of plastic LED lighting effects,

including the new X3.

This has really stripped a lot of that away.

A lot of the kind of jewellery has gone.

It's much more minimalist.

It's much more towards kind of Tesla's design aesthetic,

but with a little bit more warmth.

So you've got a big central screen

and then you've got this kind of strip,

which takes the place of a head-up display.

There's no need for an additional head-up display

in the windshield.

So I wasn't out there,

but Clint Simone on the team,

he had a good look around it

and was pretty impressed.

It's kind of tough to tell in these photos.

We'd have to talk to Clint,

like what sort of actual tactile buttons are there.

It looks like possibly under the center stack screen.

There could be something going on there,

but I can't say for sure.

Yeah, we should.

Maybe we'll get Clint in next week to talk more about it,

but it's definitely gone more towards

kind of screen and infotainment Tesla style,

but I think they've kept a bit more

kind of physical controls,

because frankly, every time anybody

does any customer research, that's what everybody tells them.

But this is what BNW interiors will be now.

Simple screen.

It's kind of like strip under the dashboard.

A little bit of me, I love that.

Maybe it's just my kind of generation,

but I love the classic BNW dials

of like the 80s and 90s.

Remember those?

And the type facing else.

So there's no home for those now.

That's gone.

Right, so to be clear,

there isn't sort of a gauge cluster

in front of you as you're driving.

You just have that,

whatever we're calling it,

that screen under the windshield,

that kind of like the Lincoln

where you just kind of look ahead

and you get your speed

and information, fuel levels

and things like that.

That's right.

There's no traditional instrument cluster,

as you would imagine it.

It's a fairly narrow horizontal strip

across the top of the fascia,

which means that you can't have

the big round rev counter

in the kind of classic BNW style.

So it'll be interesting as they get into

like the M models and things like that.

How do they do,

they're applying this to gas cars as well.

How does this apply to rev counters?

Will it just be a horizontal strip?

How will they do it?

It'll be a digital speedo.

So I haven't sort of poked around it yet,

but BNW interiors have got so sort of fussy

that I think this is kind of a nice

cleaning up of what they had.

So I'm excited by this car.

I'm kind of on board with it overall.

I mean, let's get into some of the specs

of the vehicle itself,

but I mean, I don't hate this design.

I think it's interesting.

I definitely would like to see it in person,

but I'm okay with this.

There's some interesting tech.

I mean, I think we say in the piece

that's already up on the site

that they spent more money on this vehicle

than anything else they've ever done,

because it's really, you know,

it's not just from an aesthetic perspective,

the technology is setting the tone for the future.

So the battery technology has changed.

Everything about it basically is new.

They're claiming 400 miles of range,

but I've looked at the data

for our Edmunds EV range test.

The most we've done in the BMW is 377 miles,

so they're looking to improve on that

with new battery technology.

The interesting thing about it

for me is obviously BNW already has

an EV lineup.

They've got the i4, they've got the i5,

they've got the sedans,

then they've got the iX,

which is that fairly challenging looking SUV.

Yeah, that's a nice one.

All of which are now old technology.

Yeah.

And the iX is just out of facelift.

So you've got to think going forward,

it's probably going to go on sale next spring.

Initially in a fairly high spec guys,

iX 350 X-Drive,

which is probably, I think about $60,000,

but then it will get cheaper.

There'll be lesser versions introduced.

So who's going to buy an i4 or an i5,

or particularly the iX,

because the iX is more expensive,

not a lot bigger,

and is yesterday's technology.

I think the reality is you're going to buy the iX3.

So this is the problem with EVs,

the technology moves so fast

that you're looking at their existing range

and saying, well, that's the LCD screen,

and now we've all gone LED

or OLED or whatever you want to call it.

And this particular one that they put in front of us,

you said there could be faster ones,

it could be slower ones, more affordable ones,

but this is the 108 kilowatt battery,

0 to 16, about 4.7 seconds.

Again, there could be different variations on it after this,

but this is sort of setting the tone.

That's right.

This is the 50 X-Drive.

I think there'll be a 40,

which might even be two-wheel drive,

to get the cost down,

because this is going to compete with the Tesla Model Y,

so it's going to probably sit above the Tesla Model Y,

price-wise,

but that's kind of where they're pitching it.

Or we're about to talk about the new electric GLC Mercedes,

and that's obviously in that bucket as well,

but things like the Cadillacs, that.

So it's sort of just above a Tesla Model Y.

Yeah, okay.

So in your opinion, what's the verdict on this new iX3?

I haven't sat on it yet.

Clearly, I haven't driven it, but I like the way it looks.

I think I also suspect,

and Claude Clinton said this,

it looks better in real life than it does in pictures,

which is true of a lot of modern design.

I think the interior is terrific.

Lots of new technology.

I think it's really interesting.

I think so too.

I think it's heading in the right direction.

I think the interior looks good.

Yes, I'm starting to just get used to these cars

with no gauge cluster in front of them.

The ones where it's completely gone is a little odd to me.

The ones like the Lincoln and now this BMW

are a little bit more interesting to me.

The Lincoln like took a little getting used to,

but then I was fine with just kind of having it

a little bit further away, like under the windshield.

But interesting.

And I, it's nice to see that we're hitting

the 400 mile range mark.

I kind of feel like that's where we need to be

with this next generation of EVs,

the newer technology, whatever's going on

with the battery technology.

However, they're just improving it overall.

We're learning a lot about how they're managing

that battery technology, cooling it,

heating it, you know, just everything there.

I hope so, because the infrastructure

is not getting better.

I mean, this will work with the Tesla charges

and it will have the Nax,

like the Tesla plug rather than the alternative.

But you know, unless the infrastructure gets better,

they've got to keep increasing the range.

Without getting into all the details,

yes, I just took my truck,

my lightning out to Palm Springs for an event.

And then on the way home,

I needed a little bit extra charge.

So before I left,

I saw my issue on the third EV charger

that I stopped at.

So it took me three tries,

but then I found one that was,

it seemed to work.

And only because a dude next to me

was charging his like Ionic five.

And he's like,

he's like, this is what I did to get it to work.

I was like, all right,

because nothing's working the way I was supposed to.

And it worked.

So yeah.

Too stressful.

And I see you rolling your eyes.

Yes.

That's been the narrative of every time

we try to go someplace far in an EV,

it's been, you know, kind of debacle.

All right.

So BMW makes a big statement out there

with the new SUV electric.

Mercedes is on board as well.

So Mercedes is also on board.

Also units are all,

this almost reminds me of the old days

of the Frankfurt auto show,

where Germany's big three used to build

these insane stands.

And it was just this appalling kind of

like corporate, corporate one-upmanship

where obviously like the business case

had gone out the window.

It was just build the biggest stand,

make the biggest noise

and we're all fighting each other.

So it feels almost like a return to that.

So Mercedes is showing off the GLC EV.

Now what's interesting is over recent years

we've had like the EQE, the EQS

and they've had tried to have this different naming structure.

Now it sounds like that's gone

and it's the electric version of the GLC.

So again, it's a bit of a kind of shifting paradigm,

but this is Mercedes,

although the GLC has been around

for what, two or three years now,

this is the first electric version,

which is actually a very different,

although it looks quite similar

and we'll come on to that in a minute.

This is actually a different car.

Now the old EQC, stay with me,

the old EQC was only sold in Europe,

wasn't, never made it to the US.

In the same way that the old AX3

didn't make it to the US.

But now this is coming GLC EV.

This is also about debuting

Mercedes' new design language

and it's called, let me get this right,

where are my notes?

It's called Sensual Purity.

Okay.

Which is interesting because it doesn't,

when you look at the pictures,

it doesn't look very pure

and to my eyes doesn't look very sensual either.

It's...

We're about to disagree on this

because we talked about it before we started the podcast.

For me it looks like it's got this slightly sad,

I'm going to try and describe it to you.

So if people have seen the latest generation GLS,

which has this very kind of prominent grill

that looks a bit almost audiosque

in the way that it's designed,

it's almost like trapezoidal grill.

And what it tends to is sort of like pinch the nose.

For me it looks like a slightly sad dog

in that it has this big nose

with these little eyes for light

coming out of the top of the grill.

It's recognizable as a Mercedes

and it doesn't look,

it shares obviously a lot of stuff going on with the GLC,

but it has this sort of dog snout grill

that reminds me of Audis a little bit.

And then at the rear it's got stylized LED tail lights

with the kind of Mercedes star

and Mercedes seems obsessed with branding everything at the moment.

I talked about this on a show a couple of weeks ago.

Like the Myback is a ridiculous amount of Myback badges

and now they're desperately trying to bring

the three-pointed star motif into everything,

both exterior and interior.

So do you like it?

I'll tell you.

In my parking garage,

a neighbor has the Mercedes SUV,

the electric one.

I don't even know what it's called now.

And it's just a dark blue bubble.

It's just like an egg-shaped thing with like this smooth.

There's no like real character to the grill.

It just kind of drops down and it gets smooth

and it has like just different,

like part of it's black and some of it's painted

and it just, but it just looks like the same piece of material.

It doesn't change at all.

I think this one looks better.

I think this is a much nicer,

maybe more conventional looking SUV

for what they were doing with their EV.

I almost like it better.

I think I like it better than the IX3

we were just looking at.

So this is the thing with design, right?

This is why when we do all our ratings,

we don't include aesthetics in it

because it is kind of subjective.

You're absolutely right though

that they've ditched the whole idea.

I mean, they're kind of very aerodynamic,

almost egg-shaped,

EQE and EQS,

both the sedan and the SUV

with this super aerodynamic sort of egg shape

that just all felt a bit curious and plasticky.

They've obviously gone,

okay, people don't want something

that looks so obviously kind of EV.

So let's make it look like a twist on a traditional GRC

and that's what they've done.

And to be honest,

that's what they've done with the IX3 as well.

The future gas cars will look like that.

I'll give you the bigger news on the

GRC is inside

because this is where you're seeing the big

shift from, you know,

Mercedes is going in one direction,

BMW is going in a different direction.

We're about to talk about Audi,

which seems to be different again, but

so Mercedes is that we've seen it with the CLA,

now we're seeing it with this

electric GRC.

They just decided that we're just going to

basically just going to put a bigger screen as possible.

It's a bit like what the Chinese are doing is

if you look at some of the Chinese brands,

it's like how big a screen can we stuff into your

town. You know, you got to sometimes you go to

the pub and it's, you know, the local bar

and they've got my hairdresser actually

around my barbers around the corner.

The guy admitted to me went in and just bought

the biggest screen he could afford and it's

like a hundred inches or something. It's like

the entire wall and it feels like Mercedes

is doing something to 39.1 inches.

They're calling it a hyperscreen.

It is optional. So

it'll be curious to see what it looks like

when you don't have the big screen.

But this is basically, if the BMW

is

a kind of very

three inches high and across the

top of the fascia, this is a

proper big, I don't know how

tall it is, but let's say it's kind of

at least a foot tall and spreads the

entire width of the car. So as you

as you're sitting, you're just looking at a big

telly basically.

Yes, but the way they have it kind of

broken up into sections

kind of like what they're doing

now with their screens that

kind of have the big screen is

you do have

a version of the screen where it has

like

gauges in front of you. I'm sure you can

change those things to different

options and get different information.

But you're right.

It's a screen

that goes from door to

door.

The AC vents which look like

little turbine engines or down in

the far edges and then

it's just all screen and

it's just a big flat screen going

across. But yes, compared to

let's say the Lincoln and that BMW

imagine that screen going all

the way across but moved forward

closer to you where your

normal center stack screen would be.

It's interesting.

I don't see a lot of conventional

buttons here either. Maybe there's

like something going on in the center

console that's probably like

you know

maybe

there's no auto start stop because

it's EV but something going on

there maybe sort of.

I think it's just menu buttons

to show.

Basically what you've got is a giant screen

charging ports

for your other screens, i.e. your cell

phone and then a couple of cup holders

and

yeah that's it. I suspect

those buttons in the middle are probably kind of

drive modes and everything else

so it's

you know it is again

it's minimalist in one sense

in that you haven't got like this

Armada buttons

but it's not minimalist in that when you

turn it on you've got this huge

graphical interface that stretches

across the car and there's a lot

of talk about oh well we did different bits

and we do this and we do that but it's still

pretty distracting to have that much information

in front of you and

I personally I prefer the B&W

thing I kind of like a cleaner interior

where you just don't feel kind of slightly

overwhelmed by

giant screens and flashing

things and all the rest of it.

It's a lot to take in

when you first start getting into it

you feel like you're

supposed to look at the entire screen

and I don't know that you are I think

supposed to just kind of focus like what's

on in front of you and then the passenger

gets the screen and that's another

discussion I think does the passenger

need a screen does the

passenger need access to

different controls to take over

you know even in like

the Corvette right that has that

optional like passenger

screen thing going on

I'm not even sure exactly what they can

control with it.

You mean the VAT or the

Porsches and I think

I think the Porsche I thought the Corvette

has it over there too

I could be wrong but

I've been looking at too many cars for too

long I think but

it's yeah I mean like

most passengers get in and play you know

like mess around with their iPhone or iPad

or whatever I don't know do they need

to interface with the car

it's also like just

from a

fatigue perspective particularly for a

confront you know part of the nice thing about being a passenger

is you know you can be on your screen

if you want to you know look at your

phone or your tablet but sometimes it's nice

not to be staring at a

screen I don't I mean obviously like

you know they're building cars that they think people want but

personally I spend

too much of my life staring at a screen and you know

actually when I'm driving is kind of a nice

antidote to that.

Yeah I agree

we're just looking at some more of the photos

just a different color

I think it looks like a

GLC with a slightly different grill

and you'll probably see

the tail light treatment and probably this interior

on the face lifted version of the gas

GLC so there's definitely

a sense here from both BMW and Mercedes

of convergence of EV and

gas technology we're not

going we're not doing the whole

here's a crazy looking EV

and here's a sensible looking gas car it's like

here are a bunch of

sensible vehicles

and choose if you want EV or gas

and now this compared to the

BMW we just looked at

this is a little bit more upmarket this isn't

this isn't going to be

I think this will compete with IX3 actually

this is GLC so

if you think X3 GLC line up

together so that we haven't got prices or as much

a kind of US on sale yet for

GLC we might learn more about that in the next

week but these two should line up

IX3, X3 GLC

compete IX3

GLC EV will compete so

and we have some specs on this we just

they didn't give us price they didn't give us

range where BMW gave us

estimated yeah the BMW

will come first the BMW on sale next year

we as we record

this Steve is about to

jump on a plane tomorrow

and we'll probably learn more about the Mercedes

so maybe we get Steve on next week when he gets back

from the show and talk about it the Mercedes

we're going to have a GLC 400

4Matic and a GLC

300 plus

it looks like the

400 is going to come out before

the 300 so

it looks like

late 2026 for the

GLC 400 early

27 for the GLC 300

and there are

some different packages and options there's

an AMG line which adds

some AMG

stuff like the Napa Leather and

the AMG wheels and

steering wheel and then

there's

some increased packages as you would

expect with

Mercedes the AMG

sports seat package there's a night package

exclusive

there's one called the pinnacle

the pinnacle package

is that for golfers

and then there's the pinnacle plus

line

how can you have a pinnacle plus the pinnacle is the pinnacle

I know there's a pinnacle line

there's a pinnacle plus line

I don't like that

that's like the special edition big attys

it's like you've reached the pinnacle

no

it's not the pinnacle

comes with the

that one includes all the options

you can imagine the big

sound system

surround sound system

heated ventilated seats

massage function

heated rear seats winter package

vegan

package

as well

I again

the specs we don't really know

fully like as far as range

and stuff the

the GLC 300 is

369

horsepower the 400

is 483

horsepower I think also

what we've got here is the European launch so

we might see a little bit of difference

in the US but it'll be the same

strategies BMW will come first with

probably the higher end vehicle

because there's more margin and they get

the early adopters and people who just

want to have the new thing and then

you know then a little bit later you release

the slightly cheaper version they even did the same

with the gas GLC so we will

see you know I think it will be

a similar kind of rollout to IX3

and probably by the time this hits the US

we'll excuse me we'll

have had a facelifted

GLC coming into the market

as well which will probably have a similar

interior and a similar aesthetic so we'll end up

with everything in the same place

but it's quite exciting IX3

GLC EV you know Germans

are kind of finally getting this

sorted out and then of course there's Audi

Audi let's take a look at the Audi

but first let's take a quick break and we'll be right back

hey guys it's Matt again

I just wanted to give a big shout out

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all right this is

much much less to learn

here this is again more of

a design direction I believe right

well this is

yeah I'm

I'm really excited by this

again it's a little bit polarizing

so everybody's this

basically what we look at is a new

design for

Audi

which is supposed to

let me go back a step

I'm rambling let me go back a step

2024

Audi got rid of

or let's say Audi

moved their design director

a guy called Mark Lictor

who I've met a few times

he's a really nice super nice guy

he'd been at Audi a few years

there was a feeling that they needed to make a change

and so

Mark Lictor got moved on

within the group he's still

employed and they brought in a guy called

Massimo Frescella

I hope I pronounced that the surname correctly

Massimo is somebody that I actually

got to know a little bit I used to

do some work in my previous life with

Jaguar Land Rover and their chief creative

office of Jerry McGovern

and Jerry was a guy who took all of

the plaudits as the

main man but behind Jerry

and probably the only person that

organization that I got felt that Jerry

really really trusted was

Massimo Frescella

and Massimo got poached by

Audi from Jaguar Land Rover

where he was head of exterior

design

or head of design I think into being

the chief

for Audi

so lots of people who came out this week and said

well this thing looks like the Jag

can I of course it does because you got

the same guy fundamentally in control

Massimo learnt

at the hand of Jerry McGovern and if you think

about Jaguar Land Rover's design language in

recent years it's all been about

minimalism it's been about

stripping away as much as possible

very very clean surfacing

do not over design let's have something

that's elegant and timeless

Audi had gone in the other direction

where it was like let's bolt more and more

design on let's have another slash here

and make it like a quattro and in the end

to my eyes at least it all looked a bit

messy

they've hired Massimo he's come in

and he said right we're going to go back

to the roots we're going to go back to like the

30s the auto unions

and we're going to come up with something very simple

very pure and of course

it looks a bit like the Jag because

fundamentally the same guys behind it

yeah

but I think

I quite like the Jag as well but I think

this Audi is actually an even better

execution partly because there's a lot

of obvious Audi in it

you look at the front end and it talks

goes all the way back to the auto union races

of the 1930s

it's very clean it's very elegant

it's an EV

and inside as well

very simple

again inside

it harks back a bit more to the

TT at the end of the 90s I think it came out

in 98 very simple interior

but I think

it looks great

so

interesting design direction that they're

going in I can see that maybe

how it will apply to

other vehicles in the lineup

you're right the interior is

much cleaner much more simplistic

maybe that doesn't quite

end up in their

flagship vehicles and SUVs

but I kind of like that

it's small and it's clean and it's minimal

of course not a design

issue but what I don't like is

it's pure EV

they took their little sports car like

Porsche Opus Macan and said hey let's

let's just make it an EV

and I just kind of feel like I'm signing up

Macan the

the boxer and the Cayman

and they said hey let's take

the well balanced little mid-engine

sports car

and make it an EV it was like I don't think you needed

to do that

no I mean and we talked about that last

week didn't it I think there's a lot of people in

Porsche now thinking this is this was the wrong

direction and that's what's interesting

about this car this car is an

EV but underneath

underneath you've got obviously

Porsche and Audi are

fundamentally not quite the same company

but it's all part of Volkswagen Group

was a lot of shed ownership

so we think this car is going to be

based on the

Boxster and Cayman

underpinnings

so obviously Porsche has spent a lot of money

or the group has spent a lot of money developing

this electric architecture for

Cayman and Boxster now I think what we're

going to see with this car is Audi

adopting it just like they do with the Q5

and the Macan now we're going to see it

with

with this

with this coupe so

somewhere everybody's saying it's the new TT

well it's also kind of the new

R8 because it's really big it's actually

bigger than the R8

now concept cars can be bigger because

sometimes just want to have more presence

so expected to

be bigger than the outgoing TT

and sit price wise somewhere between a TT

and an R8 and be

based on a lot of the technology and

hardware of the new Boxster and Cayman

in the same way also that

the Audi GT

is the same shares a lot with the

with the Porsche

Porsche Cayman

Porsche Cayman the

Caycan

so it looks like it's going to be made

I think it looks terrific

I know you don't 100% agree

I mean I'm okay with the design

I don't hate the design although I did

like I do like the R8 and I like

the TT

I just

having this concept

be the small sports car

EV is

I look at it and go

it looks good but you're not going to sell any

because people want

the small sports car to be a little bit

more visceral maybe a manual

transmission and an engine

and

what you'd expect like

the Boxster to be

so to do that move

to the TT as well

maybe that's what's rubbing me the wrong way

but

maybe I think it's too late in the day actually

for them to re-engineer

everything to fit a gas and I'm sure

there's a lot of people in the company that would love to say

you know

is there no way that we can kind of cut and shut a bit

to stick the six cylinder

back in and I just don't believe

that's possible

I don't think they can do it with this platform but I do like that

it is very different

than what like the Cayman looks

like

the Porsche

I mean using the platform

this EV platform

and really mixing it up and changing the style

like I think they did a good job of just making it

not sort of a rebadged version

of the Porsche

I was looking back at Massimo's background

and he's Ford

he did some things like the Kia Soul

I mean really super talented guy

but he started his career at Batone

in Italy

he did something in 1999

called I don't even google it Matt

for the YouTube audience but it's called the

Alfa Romeo Bella

it's an Alfa Romeo concept but it was the

Batone Bella and it was kind of looking

hinting at an Alfa Romeo

and when I pull this up it's funny with

designers like how they almost like keep

the germ of an idea and then run it their whole career

and yeah so this

is late 90s and there's a lot

of this TT concept in this as well

so again very clean lines

very clean surfacing

not over elaborate

I'm looking at the right car

yeah that's the

the Batone Bella

if you just click on google

images yeah it's very clean

looks a bit 90s

but you know small wheels by today's

taste but again very kind of

interesting

that's a fair bit of the new concept in that

so I'm excited

I think Audi's design in recent years

has kind of gone in the wrong direction for me

Audi's are all about elegant simplicity

really high quality interiors

interior quality has gone downhill

and I just think if you look

at things like the new Q5

it's not an ugly car but it's just

it's just a lot

and I think this is you know and I look at some of the Jaguar Landrovers

and there's that kind of elegant simplicity

to them so I'm

quite excited about what I'm supposed to do

I'm a big fan of his design basically

I would say I

do with all three of

the big three German manufacturers

I just think they kind of lost their way with design

what we've seen recently from BMW

from Audi

and from Mercedes I just

especially on the EV Mercedes I just don't love them

I just think they're

listen they work the aerodynamics it's super

sleek and it cuts through the air and I'm sure

it's quiet and

works but

at the end of the day it's just

I think the engineering

just sort of trumped the

the aesthetics and people have to

like the look before they get

in and fall in love with the rest of the car

this is

this kind of the selling process would be like

come take a look at this and then if you like it

we'll tell you more

like will you drive it and will you like the specs

will you like the range will you like the performance

will you like you know but it all starts

with that look right correct which is what

Hyundai and others like I mean you know Hyundai

took a punt with the IONIQ 5 this was

very distinctive

and I think with that

well actually we've got to get people through the door

we've got to do something distinctive

and I personally think they pulled it off

with that car and the IONIQ 6

that streamliner aesthetic

doesn't sell nearly as well and

ok people buy SUVs not sedans

but really that's because people look at IONIQ 6

and say man not me too

too much of a leap for me personally I like it

but for most people it's too much of a

we talked about that too

the profile is just looks like a sad face

yeah

but the IONIQ 5

look at the success for them

I can't go from here a mile away to the grocery store

probably without seeing two

they're everywhere

and the genesis has looked great

and you know I think one things that the Europeans

have got you know versus

you know some of the Chinese and start-up brands

is the heritage and I think Audi's been pretty smart

with this to look back

in history and not make a prestige

that sense of

heritage think about the watch industry

Rolex doesn't

start to reinvent

if they tweak the oyster

they tweak it maybe a different colored face

or whatever and I think the car industry

has a lot of that as well

I think we'll see more and more of the heritage

and the essence of the

brand so

it's been a big week

and the auto show next week

and maybe we'll get Steve on at the end of the week

and if he's back

I can't remember exactly what day he gets back

yeah there was more we kind of ran out of time for it today

but we'll get to it as well

Honda Prelude for example

that looks interesting

I think it looks good

we'd like to dig into that car a little bit

as well to see

yeah maybe talk about that

I think that's an interesting

hybrid meets type R

it's kind of an interesting car

we'll get into that next week

I know you've got to run to another meeting

and as do I actually

so it's going to be quick

a quick turn around

yeah thanks guys thanks for listening

is there anything else we're missing

we'll just wait until we hear maybe

we have a video live on the

IX3 so check that out

on our YouTube channel

if you want to see it in all its glory

awesome

thanks guys thanks so much for listening

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and the bag in the wheel

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CarCast+Edmunds - We take a look at the new design direction for BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Audi.

iX3 (G08)

Lincoln Navigator

Tesla Model

Mercedes-Benz GLC

Ford F-150 Lightning

Glc Ev

Mercedes-Benz EQE

Chevrolet Corvette

Mercedes-Benz GLC 300

Audi Quattro

Porsche Macan

Porsche Cayman

Porsche Boxster

Audi R8

Kia Soul

Hyundai Ioniq 5

Hyundai Ioniq 6

Honda Prelude

About this episode

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