25 Jul 07
A few years ago if you wanted to make a successful car, you examined the class in which it was to compete, analysed the performance of each competitor and made sure yours did it better. Simple. Today, there's a new approach in town: instead of selecting a class and slugging it out with pre-existing rivals, you simply invent a class of your own. It means your customers can stand out from the crowd, which they'll like, and you'll have the best car in a class of one.
These are what the industry likes to call crossover vehicles. We've seen estates that think they're off-roaders, off-roaders that think they're SUVs, even an MPV that thought it was a coupe (remember the Renault Avantime, anyone?), so I guess we should not be too surprised that someone has decided to see what happens when an SUV invites a coupe round to dinner, turns down the lights and gently wafts Knights in White Satin out of the stereo.
That someone is Audi and the progeny of this union is called the Cross Coupe. The Cross Coupe is not and nor will it ever be a production car. It is a 'design concept', one of that strange breed of creations manufacturers commission for a vast array of different reasons - in some cases it's a serious attempt to redefine the technological or design hard points within which the company will work, while at the other end of the scale it's simply because they've not got anything better to put on their stand at the next motor show.
If the Cross Coupe fell into this latter category, you'd not be reading about it here. For all its muscular good looks, for all the interesting innovations it contains, what's most interesting about the Cross Coupe is that it's so credible. Just as you can be sure it won't go into production, so you can be equally sure that something damn like it surely will.
