Audi A7 Confirmed for the US

Johan de Nysschen, Audi's executive vice president in North America, was able to shed some light on the future of the brand in an interview with autoblog.com. According to Mr de Nysschen, the rumors about the A7 are true, as the car is in the works. As you might imagine, the A7 will be positioned below the A8 in terms of pricing - we’re looking at about $80,000 when the car will finally arrive in the US.

In terms of looks, de Nysschen said that the 2009 Audi Sportback concept car shown at the Detroit Auto Show can give you a pretty good idea about how the new A7 will look like.

Johan de Nysschen explained for the source how the two top end models will interact on the market:

"This top end segment is characterized by more conservative people, and we need to clearly take lower levels of risk with a flagship model [the A8]. But we recognize too that there is a sizable enough cluster of customers in that same segment who are ready for a more avant-garde design [the A7].

"So we will essentially be positioning two cars into the same segment, which means that independently, the volume each attains is not that significant, but when you put them together, it will mean that our share of that segment will grow quite dramatically."

In terms of sales, de Nysschen said it is expected that the new A8 will sell 5,000 to 6,000 units, while the future A7 could go up to 8,000 units. Unfortunately, the US market will not see the A5 Sportback any time soon.