Any company can survive downturns in sales, market share and profitability – and Audi is far from alone among European car makers in finding the going pretty choppy at the moment. But what’s more worrying is the suspicion that its commitment to engineering excellence may not be what it once was, and the perception that Audi is no longer clear what it stands for, within the premium car market and within the VW Group.

There are reasons to be optimistic. The man in charge at Audi, former Porsche executive Gernot Döllner, who took over from Markus Duesmann in September 2023, has a good working relationship with VW Group boss Oliver Blume, who is also in charge of Porsche. Döllner has, we understand, given a clear brief to Massimo Frascella – who took over from Marc Lichte as chief creative officer in June 2024 – to avoid vague future-gazing and instead create a down-to-earth show car that points to a production vehicle we’ll be able to buy a couple of years from now.

But there’s no denying the scale of the problem, and the terrifying financial situation it’s given rise to. The most spectacular figure from the third quarter of 2024 is actually quite misleading: the 91 per cent drop in profits, compared to the same period in 2023, was largely due to one-off costs associated with the imminent closure of the Brussels plant. But other figures can’t be shrugged off. Sales are down in Europe, China and the US, and thousands of jobs are at risk, including many R&D specialists – the people who should be working on the engineering solutions that will restore some of the shine to Audi’s tarnished reputation for quality.

Group-wide, the Cariad in-house software division that cost billions and hasn’t delivered the anticipated cutting-edge capability, will be replaced by the friuts of a deal between VW and US EV specialists Rivian. Abandoning the underperforming old software should improve the cars, but it’s not going to be cheap.

However good the software may soon be, sales in the US could continue to be a problem. If President Trump goes ahead with imposing dramatically higher import taxes, that will hit the tens of thousands of Audis built in Mexico for the US market, as well as German-built cars.

Looking to the near future, Döllner has split development work between seven teams, each focused on a group of related products. For instance, one group’s efforts are centred on the MEB and MQB platforms, which between them should provide the next generation of electric and combustion replacements for the A1, Q2, A3 and other modestly sized products. At the other extreme, a different group is tasked with creating the future electric A8 saloon and crossover.

There’s a long list of possible newcomers. Insiders expect a new electric Q2 crossover in 2026 and the following year an all-electric A3 replacement (to be badged A2, under Audi’s new naming convention, where odd numbers have engines and evens are all electric).

The project referred to internally as C-Sport is what’s left of Audi’s high-flying sports car ambitions. It denotes the sister model of the battery-powered Cayman coupe based on Porsche’s Mission R matrix. Stuttgart’s future clean-air two-seaters have apparently come in way over budget, and the target retail price is now a stiff €130,000. As a result, Audi has not yet confirmed its C-Sport spin-off. Other projected sports cars, including the R8 replacement, have been mothballed, and the next-generation e-Tron GT – to be twinned with 2028’s second-generation SSP-based Porsche Taycan –is currently on hold.

Another interesting potential newcomer is project HardQore – the capital Q stands for a new quattro all-wheel-drive system with up to three e-motors, stacked suspension, four-wheel steering and off-road-biased torque vectoring. Co-developed with Magna, the 800-volt HardQore shares its ladder-frame chassis, electronic architecture and key drivetrain elements with the recently announced electric SUV and pick-up from Scout, the heritage workhorse brand revived by VW; a four-cylinder range-extender petrol engine driving the live rear axle will also be on offer.

The South Carolina plant, which has a projected annual capacity of 200,000 units, could in principle also accommodate the still nameless Audi derivative due in 2027 or 2028. It’s believed to be a three-row high-end metal-top priced one or two notches below the Mercedes G-Class and imminent electric Range Rover.

But there’s a glitch: like the C-Sport, the HardQore project has not yet had the necessary investment assisgned to it.

One of Lichte’s most compelling future Audis, designed before his departure, is the RS Allroad, with big wheelarches and a rugged overall look. Badged A7, the air-sprung go-almost-anywhere Avant will be available as a hybrid, petrol or diesel engines but not EV. The V8 that would once have been an automatic choice for an RS package in this segment is to be replaced by a twin-turbo 3.0-litre V6 in combination with a choice of scalable e-motors.

That sounds very appealing – and very do-able.

In sync with all VW brands except perhaps Bentley and Lamborghini, Audi needs to tighten its belt and concentrate on profitable volume-sellers like 2028’s A4 e-Tron, which was Lichte’s final effort before Frascella arrived from JLR. Straight-bat cars like that will be prioritised over emotional niche models – no more coupes, no more convertibles or roadsters, no confirmed new sports car. Also due for the chop are the barely profitable A1, the stillborn Q1 and the non-e-Tron Q8.

It will be a shame to see the back of sportier and wilder Audis, if that’s the way the belt-tightening strategy manifests itself. But maybe that’s exactly what Audi needs right now: to get back to the sort of cars that made its reputation in the first place.