Spy Photo article

While the Schulte-Design images are the most common, a few other spy photos of the next-generation A4 have appeared over the past 18 months. Below are two more photos that I have collected. I don't know anything about these photos, but the one on the left is definitely a fake (the main give away is that the license plate is smaller than the rings!) The other image, on the right, has been floating around for some time. The image quality of the photo is very poor, so it is very hard to tell if it is computer enhanced or not. But I have always thought it looked like a squashed A6 with A4 badges on it.

Click for larger photo

The next image is from a mid-November 1998 issue of the European magazine Auto Bild. This magazine announced that this was a spy photo of the next-generation A4 and it will debut next year as a 2001 model. This same image recently appeared in the U.S. magazine Automotive News. I was going to list a number of reasons why I thought this image was computer generated, but Automotive News has saved me the trouble. In the text that accompanies the photo, they refer to the image as "computer enhanced" and is "based on insider descriptions and sighting of prototype." Click here to read the complete Automotive News text.

Lastly, this illustration by an artist named Radovan Varicak was published in the April 1999 issue of Car and Driver. The text reads "Audi A4 coupe? Reportedly in the marketing plans for the next-generation A4 is a coupe version like this, due by 2002."

These are all the images I have found that claim to be the next-generation A4. We know that most of them are images created by people not employed by Audi. Still, many people think the cars in the photographs are real and don't believe they are fake. In the next section I will show how a little time, the right equipment and a little artistic talent can create a fake automobile from some existing images.