Audi’s Front Grilles Are Unlikely To Get Any Bigger, Says Boss

Audi has suggested that its front grilles will no longer continually expand in size and that it will think up ways to make them slightly less imposing.

Speaking to Car Throttle at the premiere of the e-tron GT concept at the ongoing Los Angeles Auto Show, Audi exterior design boss Andreas Mindt said the automaker has a number of ideas in mind for its future grilles.

“It’s not the big mouth anymore. It’s not growing growing growing, it’s not like this. When you paint the frame black, it looks bigger. When you paint the frame body colour, it looks smaller…there are a lot of things you can do architecture-wise to change that and we have a lot of good ideas for that.”

Under Audi’s most recent design language, its iconic singleframe grille has gradually expanded in size and changed in shape. In its most recent form, the grille is very aggressive with pointed edges and sharp lines.

With the Audi e-tron GT concept, however, Audi showed how it can maintain a similar grille size and shape to what it currently uses but make it appear smaller by blending it in with surrounding bodywork.

“Maybe the border between grille and no grille will meld together – the frame is not like a border any more. Just think about what you can do in the future to make it meld together. It would be interesting to see,” Mindt commented.

Of course, a vehicle with an all-electric powertrain doesn’t really need a grille at all, as long as it features other intakes to cool the electric motors and battery. However, only a small percentage of the grille used by Audi’s current ICE models actually has any functional openings to feed the engine so there’s definitely freedom to shrink or re-shape them.

While it’s unlikely to happen, we wouldn’t be opposed to future Audi models actually using different grilles from each other.