Not Messing With Success, The New Audi A5 Looks Exactly Like The Old Audi A5 - Identisch, Ja?

“I can’t quite believe it, but it actually looks different to the last one. In a wild change of tack…,” CAR Magazine’s CJ Hubbard writes, “…Audi has built a new car that doesn’t look nearly indistinguishable from its predecessor.”

Er, sure.

To be fair, Hubbard is among an early group of drivers who spent a fair chunk of time with the new Audi A5 in Portugal, and with time comes familiarity, and with familiarity comes an ability to more easily distinguish the new car from the old. We’ll get there, too.

Moreover, while reviews in Top Gear and The Telegraph were more direct in regards to the new A5’s, “same-again bodywork,” and the idea that, “designers phones in the changes,” Hubbard simply said the new A5 does not look nearly indistinguishable from the old A5, which could be translated to mean that it does look somewhat indistinguishable.

Of course the new Audi A5 looks entirely like the old Audi A5. That’s how Audi does things, particularly when the predecessor was a home run. Why mess with success?

The first Audi A5 arrived just prior to – gloomy clouds special effects, please – The Great Recession and managed to steadily increase its popularity, despite the market’s gradual turn away from less practical cars, despite the typical rejection coupes face as they age.

U.S. sales of the Audi A5 family didn’t hit their peak until 2013, six years after launch. Yes, the overall market was expanding, but six-year-old coupes and convertibles are supposed to sell poorly, and the A5 family’s U.S. sales growth – 197 percent between 2008 and 2013 – dwarfed the market’s 18 percent expansion during the same period.

(Note: the silver cars compared here are S5 and A5 models; the red comparison is of RS5 and S5 variants.)

The Audi A5 played a surprisingly significant role in Audi’s post-recession sales explosion. After dipping slightly in the doldrums of 2009, Audi USA sales doubled during a five-year period between 2010 and 2015. One out of every ten Audis sold during that period were A5s.

Even in 2015, as A5 sales plunged by more than a fifth in the first-generation’s final full year of availability, the Audi managed to generate as much sales activity as the BMW 2-Series and attracted more Audi customers than the A7 and A8 combined. A decade since its debut, the A5 has not become an uncommon car, a real testament to the design’s staying power.

Recognizing this fact, Audi tinkered. Sure, it’s not identical, and that’s most apparent at the front where Audi’s new grille shape takes center stage. But this is not a coupe that shouts, “Flashier, Newer, Hotter,” to the potential coupe buyer walking into the Lexus dealer across the street, intent on examining an RC350 F Sport.

[Image: Audi Media Center]

Timothy Cain is the founder of GoodCarBadCar.net, which obsesses over the free and frequent publication of U.S. and Canadian auto sales figures. Follow on Twitter @goodcarbadcar and on Facebook.