Audi Concept C previews a radical new sports car

The Audi Concept C punts the four rings in an entirely new direction. Its styling is crisp and uncluttered, its ‘grille’ has been reduced in size, and its cabin favours tactile controls over ever-larger displays. Better still, it is a genuine sports car – something Audi has not really offered since, well, ever.

This is effectively two cars in one, and not merely because it is an attractive two-door coupé with a folding cabriolet roof.

It offers both a set of pointers towards the appearance of all future Audis, devised by new design chief Massimo Frascella’s team, and a fairly direct look at an Audi sports car due to arrive in 2027. It is ‘rumoured’ to use the same platform as the heavily delayed electric Porsche Boxster and Cayman. We certainly did not tell you that.

Audi Concept C: a near-production sports car

The everyday details reveal just how close this car is to production. It wears conventional road tyres, has door mirrors rather than cameras – thankfully – and carries actual windscreen wipers. There is even a recess for a rear number plate. Carmakers do not bother with such dull practicalities on a concept unless it is expected to reach showrooms within a few years.

Audi is saying nothing about its range, performance, mass or price, but it is keen to discuss the styling. The vertical front ‘grille’ theme takes inspiration from the 1936 Auto Union Type C racing car and the 2006 Audi A6. In reality, it is a panel behind which the forward-facing radar can be concealed.

Pair that upright ‘grille’ with the four-element headlamps and there is more than a hint of Bugatti Chiron at the front, is there not? Audi’s designers blush at the comparison, maintaining that it selected four LEDs because the brand is synonymous with that number: four rings, four-wheel drive and 4mm from your rear bumper.

The rear is equally pared back. There is no pretend mesh or costume-jewellery exhaust treatment, unlike the recent RS3s and Q5s. Thank goodness. Four-element LEDs repeat the front-end signature, while the missing rear window supposedly exists to ‘save weight’. Are slats really lighter than glass? Never mind: it remains a concept. There are references to the R8 LMS endurance racer and Will Smith’s Audi RSQ from 2004’s I Robot. That science-fiction film took place in 2035, leaving Audi only a decade to work out spherical wheels.

Of course, that film was wildly implausible. It imagined a future in which technology giants promised armies of autonomous robots, while AI spun dangerously out of control. As if.

Nineties cues and an electric future

In the slightly more plausible present, the Concept C leans into nostalgia with updated Nineties ‘Avus’ six-spoke wheels, featuring aerodynamic faces and 3D-machined spokes. Those charging flaps set into the rear haunches look rather like a fragment of the old R8 ‘sideblade’, too. You spotted it as well, then.

Its overall profile shouts ‘mid-engined’, yet look as hard as you like and there are no ‘e-tron’ badges. With no cooling apertures or ducts, the Concept C is plainly suggesting an EV future – although who can be certain? Porsche is actively reworking the Macan to accept petrol power. Just picture this Audi with a 400bhp turbocharged in-line five mounted behind the cabin.

More probably, it will adopt a ‘mid-battery’ arrangement like the forthcoming Boxster and Cayman. Those Porsches have been postponed until late 2027 as Porsche tries to find buyers for them, giving Audi time to refine the foundations. Hopefully, though, it changes almost nothing in the cabin.

Tactile Audi Concept C interior controls

Inside, the Concept C feels both forward-looking and unmistakably Audi. Like the exterior, it is clean and restrained, but it rejects enormous screens, touch-operated controls and even Audi’s current oblong steering wheel. Instead, there is a round wheel with a circular hub and a machined Audi badge. It looks timeless, does it not?

Its steering-wheel controls are made from anodised aluminium and deliver a firm ‘click’ when pressed. The rotary scroll controls have more knurling than Horacio Pagani’s bathroom taps. Naturally, a couple of concept-car indulgences remain: a motorised lid over the central cubby, for instance, and climate controls that glow through a translucent shelf. We hope Audi swaps the latter for additional buttons.

The driver display is clearly a rendered screen. A central infotainment touchscreen is also present, emerging from a concealed compartment when called upon by a switch. Even the driving position is archetypally Audi, with the pedals shifted slightly to the right.

Have you noticed the air-vent slats? There are four, naturally, along with four physical buttons on the centre console. There may be only two seats, but they combine minimalism with a touch of cleverness. Audi selected wool not because it is supposedly kinder to cows, but because its seat-ventilation system can breathe through the material. That also explains the lack of speaker grilles in the doors: music simply filters through the weave.

No grilles inside or out? This is genuinely a new sort of Audi, and it could prove a very smart one.

An electric sports car presents Porsche with a philosophical dilemma, but it seems a more natural proposition for Audi. Let us be honest: Audi has traditionally sold cars more for their design than for their driving character.

Now that Audi has a separate Chinese sub-brand named, um, ‘AUDI’, it can build a European sports car without fearing that it will lack relevance in its largest worldwide market.

The Concept C could become an enormous trendsetter, persuading a new generation to regard Audi as a serious design leader and sports-car manufacturer again, just as the TT and R8 once did.

Its weight and price remain unknown; those details can wait for another day. Keep your fingers crossed that both figures are low. Might Audi give it the ‘TT’ badge? We think it would be mad not to.