Here’s the official video of the new Audi A8 sedan, including some road footage and beauty shots to get a closer look. The new A8 will debut first with the 4.2-litre TFSI V8 engine with 372 hp, followed by the TDI V8 with 350 hp. We also get a look at the new MMI multimedia system with touch pad function.

Talk is already occurring on when we will see the S8 sports version as well. Autocar reports that the S8 will set the design benchmark for the future performance models from Audi. The new design language will subsequently appear on the Audi S1, S6 and S7. This also confirms that we will see “S” versions of the Audi A7 and new A1 hatch, and they will hopefully include greater stylistic differences than the current S range provides over the standard models.

Continue reading: Audi A8 video and S8 news

Reports say the new Audi A1 will be made without the all wheel drive Quattro technology we’ve come to know as synonymous with the Audi brand. Front wheel drive will now be favoured on the A1, and the sportier S1 and RS1 will also have front wheel drive. The A1 Coupé should debut at the 2010 Geneva Motor Show, ready for an August market debut in Europe.

The A1 will be Audi’s competitive offering at the smaller end of the premium market, with a plan to produce 90,000 vehicles a year. What’s more, Audi believes that between the A1 and the A3, there is rooom for an “environmental” A2 model, all of which is aimed at getting Audi back into smaller models.

The sporty Audi S1 model should appear later, possibly in February 2011, and an A1 cabrio model is planned for 2012. Will it be successful or will the market miss the AWD Quattro technology too much? It seems that Audi can still bet on removing the Quattro in favour of a lighter and less expensive car, but it will depend on whether that’s what the market wants from the popular brand. In the pics is the Audi Metroproject Quattro concept.

Source | Autobild and GermanCarBlog

Continue reading: No Quattro for Audi A1: plans revealed

Car Magazine has obtained official design sketches of the new Audi A1, Mini-rival from Ingolstadt. They write that these sketches have been “smuggled out of Ingolstadt’s design HQ”.

The Audi A1 will join the B-premium segment (or supermini), a segment that has grown in appeal, with the success of the Mini (and, seemingly, of the Fiat 500). The A1 aims to be a classy hatchback, with Audi’s typical design style and all of the “vorsprung durch technik” rhetoric.

The A1, which should be just under 4 meters long, will be the first car built around VAG’s new MQB formula (”modular transverse matrix”). One can suppose that the MQB is the equivalent for small cars of the MLB platform that Audi has started using on the A5 (and will use for all models from the A4 upwards). The next A3 (coming in 2010) will also be based on the MQB formula, which should help lower the design and assembly costs, thanks to its modularity (according to Audi it will be 1.000 $ cheaper per unit compared to VAG’s current small-car platforms).

Continue reading: Audi A1 - first official sketches