Mystery Monday: Jon Zammett, head of PR at Audi

History will recall that the R8’s hand-built V8 petrol engines, and as a matter of fact all of the diesel units used by later prototypes, were home grown power units built at Neckarsulm, just a few metres from where the R8 road car was built. It will of course also contain plenty of chapters inserted by equally celebrated human heroes of the Audi endurance racing phenomenon, chief among whom are arguably nine-times LM 24 winner Tom Kristensen and three-time victor Allan McNish.

The road to success for Audi is just as peppered with milestones as the race circuit. Among the highlights are the aluminium space frame, a concept employed by the brand for the first time in 1993 and now adopted widely by large cars of many makes, and of course the game-changing quattro all-wheel-drive system that broke cover in 1980 and is now seen as a staple configuration for an ever-increasing number of high-performance cars.

It would have seemed like lunacy back in 2000 to suggest that world-class motor racing would involve hybrid power and regeneration as evinced by the latest R18, but then predicting that relative underdog Audi would graduate from a sales base of just over 40,000 cars in the UK that same year to become the dominant force among the ‘big-three’ German brands so far in 2016 would have appeared equally absurd. The shifting sands of brand fortunes, and the unpredictability of customer demands, are truly fascinating phenomena.

In my 25 years in the Volkswagen Group, and especially since the dawn of the new millennium when I joined Audi, customer demands and needs have intensified. There has been a breath-taking proliferation of models and derivatives filling countless new niches. Audi is close to quadrupling its 2000 sales figure principally because UK buyers are demanding premium on an unprecedented scale. 

It takes brands a long time – decades in fact – to develop, and this is especially true in the premium sector. Thirty years is a typical incubation period to plot any significant change. Look at what has been happening to the fortunes of car brands since the 90s and you'll see a distinct polarisation going on – a marked ‘flight to premium’, and the consequential creation of what we call a ‘sinking middle’ – the middle ground populated by the more mainstream makers. It's now all about true, authentic premium cars more than ever before.

Great brand positioning means huge discipline, focus and a very long-term vision. Audi, for example, has come a very long way since the Ur quattro was cheerily displayed in the corner of a VW showroom on a brown shag-pile carpet in the early 80s. The firm’s model strategy and its clear brand positioning has brought it a meteoric rise to success, and a fourth-place ranking in the league table of all car brands on sale in Britain.

The most exciting prospect of all is that we have seen nothing yet. In the next 10 years we will see a rollercoaster-like journey of change in the automotive arena that will make the last 30 years seem dull. But for me it’s been the most intriguing and unrepeatably tremendous ride so far.