On the strategy argument – just how much sense would it make for Audi to restrain itself to use LEDs only on the bigger A’s, Q’s and R’s when we’ll be dealing with LED lights in every new little city flitzer from Hyundai, Kia, Dacia and the likes in the near future?
So maybe the problem for Audi’s design strategy is not the A4 in your rear view mirror on the M1. I’d just love the actual design to be way more subtle and sophisticated in the future again.
Less is more…

Ah, and one more thing – if we are to believe Wikipedia, Audi was founded in Zwickau, Germany on July 16, 1909. I’d think this gives them quite a good reason to celebrate their 100th birthday.
(Even if they only came to the states in the 70s.)

“What about the long-term strategy?”

And the only conclusion i came up during the last year and half (basically from when the economy crashed), is that especially the German car manufactures (and few other) has such as strong and powerful resource on money, marketing, ads and etc., that they are brain washing people.

The TACTICS is: ” Nobody will remember, and if they do we will make them forget”.

Here same example:
Audi this year as “CELEBRATED” the 100th year, well the was and is a big bullshit (Volkswagen introduced the Audi brand to the United States for the 1970 model year, and Audi AG only started in 1985).
But in times of recession they needed to cash in. SO THEY DID, they put up a big campaign Worldwide, and here we go Audi is 100th.
(and the mass did not check, did not know, did not care; they just trusted).

I could continue with other example from the MERC, just look at how they have dry executed their “real” entrance (again) with “their OWN” F1 team.

And MORE to make this operation, (in which now we know, there were talk for over 5 months); they have waited, (to make their announce or even the smallest speculation), the have waited to be sure that BMW effectively was pulling out, so now all the scene is THEIRS. (and think if they will really take on board Schummy).

I would not like to be a member of the BMW board during these months, and i believe that who take the decision to pull the plug now is under incredible pressure, right now.

Another very important aspect of the “Nobody will remember” strategy is the amount of Industry news that every day are out. You see 15-20 years ago a news break up, and was in every bodies mouth for weeks, today news are out constantly, true is easier to get them, but again they are so many that people just forget, they come and go, they come and go.

A little like the LED lamps, they have come, they will go, the important was cashing in….(at the right time)….

I can see the temptation (driven, as Joe said, by marketing/sales) to drive LEDs down the scale because they can charge precious euros for them. However, in the long run, motorists are left not with the image of ueber-cool (as they would have been if the current LED language had been limited to the R8/RS models and the A6 Avant), but of the twat in his A3 1.6 with a “visibility option pack’ or something similarly crap.

It almost seems a pity, in this case, that one of the benefits of LED technology is extra long lamp life…

In fact is the all product strategy that i would question.

In any case, we may like it or not but the Audi guys are cashing in multiple times on their little pieces of light that we can buy for 50 quid (check on the accessory list how much they charge for the led lamps).

True the LED game is nearly over, but the COCKs, will be there for much longer.

The A6 Avant lamps, to this day, are still one of the coolest – if not the coolest, interpretations/uses of LED technology in tail lamps. Minimal in the extreme and somehow evoking a cold-as-ice, utopian/dystopian future, I think they work so well because they are in harmony with the outline of the lamp unit and the sculpture of the vehicle itself. Further, the fact that they are a closed loop gives me some kind of geometric satisfaction. Funnily enough, the LED lamps on the facelifted A6 saloon have never done it for me. I think I know why:

Other lamps in the Audi range may also form a closed loop but, in the case of the Q5 and A6 saloon for example, are so angular, so… jaunty in their juxtaposition against the surrounding sculpture of the body that they appear as a crass afterthought, a technology or a hallmark installed for its own sake, rather than out of any desire to complement the overall design theme.

You talk of ubiquity. I knew that the game was well and truly up for Audi and it’s current interpretation of LED daylight running lamps when I started noticing B5 Volkswagen Passats (the previous generation) with LEDs in the headlamps, under the headlamps and even around the headlamps.

Surely Audi must know the game is up when you can buy your piece of Bavarian “luxury” as a €/£49.99 kit from Halfords… Oh well, at least the heat is off the chav in an E36 BMW with an “angel eye” kit.

To me, there’s a wider issue with the strategy Audi have employed here. I don’t have a problem with many of the LED lighting designs per se (the back of the A6 avant comes to mind), but it’s the fact that every Tom, Dick and Harry in the base spec A3 now has them, and that every rep in the land specs these things on his company A4 tdi S-line.

They’re becoming ubiquitous, firmly associated with Audi in the public’s eye, and are a key part of the firm’s overall design strategy it would seem. Which doubtless has the marketing department in rapture, because they can charge several hundred pounds extra for them. Yet it’s also quickly helping to sully Audi’s image, because the association for non Audi drivers (thanks to Mr A4 sitting on your bumper in the outside lane of the M1) can be summarised with the word “tosser”.

When these things were the preserve of R8s and top of the line A8s and A6s, it was a discrete signifier of the fact that a rather more special than normal Audi was about to pass you, which meant you were happy to get out of its way. But the guy in the 1.9tdi A3 who’s been sitting on my arse for the past mile? He’s clearly a jerk, so there’s no way he’s coming past me!

I never thought the Q’s looks good comparing to the A’s anyway, I feel the Q’s have a weaker job in styling than the A’s.