Audi A5 goodbye? The A4 could return

Audi A4 goodbye. Now it's called the Audi A5. It was back in 2024 when the Ingolstadt-based manufacturer decided to say goodbye to the historic acronym for greater clarity when it came to thermal or all-electric models, with the 'even' numbers intended exclusively for lithium-ion cars. Two years later comes a possible about-face, directly from CEO Gernot Döllner during an interview with Australian magazine Drive.

A for low-wheelers, Q for SUVs. This will be the strategy at Audi, with no unnecessary complications between electric and thermal numbers. As we have already seen on the latest generation Audi A6, the same name for the internal combustion model or Bev, saying goodbye to unnecessary complications that are easy to decide on during interminable marketing meetings but which in real life diminish sales. As Döllner hinted, the A4 name could return on the occasion of the restyling expected indicatively by 2028.

It is not the first time that a manufacturer has gone back on the name of one of its historic models. The most striking case was when Fiat presented the Gingo, a model that was to replace the Panda, at the Geneva Motor Show in 2003. 'Thanks' to the threat of a multi-million dollar lawsuit by Renault in defence of the Twingo name, Fiat changed its mind and chose the name Panda.

In much more recent times, the debut of all-electric models has produced similar results, such as at Mercedes where the EQ range was to represent the 200% electric models (EQB, EQC, EQS, etc.) only to realise that it is much more useful for sales purposes to use the same name as the thermal models already known to customers. Ditto at Volkswagen, after which the ID range will slowly be replaced starting with the ID.Polo initially christened ID.2.