By the mid 1990s, Ferdinand Piech had bounced his way from being the chief at Audi to his position as the boss of the truly giant VW Group. His technical genius saw him hatching a plan to build numerous VWs, Audis, Seats and Skodas the four brands in the company portfolio, using the maximum number of shared components. However, despite sharing these parts, the four brands still had to retain distinct identities, something that many doubted they would be able to accomplish. It wasn’t long before, once again, Ferdinand Piech proved his doubters in the VW Company, the industry as a whole, and in certain sections of the motoring press conclusively wrong. The 1997 A6 saw the flowering not only of Piech’s platform strategy, but an amazing rebirth of the genius of German industrial design, echoing and paying homage to all of its grand accomplishments earlier in the century. Under the skin, the A6 shared much with the new VW Passat, and although the suspension systems and floorpan were near identical, the engineering was subtle enough to allow slightly different wheelbases and tracks, sufficient flexibility to give the cars different driving characteristics. For the average buyer, though, it’s the styling both inside and out that gives a car its identity. The A6 was so distinctive that it was a real shock for a lot of people. Audi’s stylists, led by Peter Schreyer, had rediscovered the pre-war German industrial design school.
For many people, the Bauhaus school defined the true nature of industrial design in the 2oth century. The A6’s futuristic rump, with narrow lamp clusters mounted on each corner of the tail and heavily curved roof pillars, was both modern and reminiscent of the art deco and ocean liner style.
