To automakers, big and small, cars are like children, and naming them is a big responsibility.
Over the course of automotive history, many car model names have found a permanent place in the public's consciousness, such as the Ford Mustang, Honda Accord, and Lamborghini Countach.
Sometimes, cars are blessed with less-than-ideal names, such as the Subaru BRAT, Ford Probe, or Ferrari LaFerrari.
Typically, German luxury cars are the outliers in the naming convention, as automakers like BMW and Mercedes like to use numbers and letters rather than creative names to designate their cars' body styles and engine sizes. This confusing system produces head-scratching names like the BMW i5 M60 or ridiculously long ones like the Mercedes-Benz AMG GT 63 S E Performance.
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Volkswagen Group brand Audi is also no stranger to this naming system. Before it standardized its model naming system by giving its sedans and coupes "A" names and "Q"s to its SUVs, it relied purely on numbers. In 1994, its lineup consisted of cars called the 90, the 100, the V8, the S4, and the Cabriolet.
Twenty years later, the Four Rings is again shaking up the luxury auto industry and implementing a name change that will confuse its customers.
Audi
Audi's new coupe sedan?
In an announcement this week, Audi unveiled the replacement of its popular A4 four-door sedan for 2025.
On the outside, the new car is bigger than the outgoing compact sedan by a few inches and features updated styling that is inspired by the futuristic lines of its electric e-tron models. Additionally, Audi made the new model more practical for its customers, featuring a liftback design to set it apart from a traditional sedan.
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This new sedan also comes standard as a hybrid. Paired with Audi's turbocharged, 168-horsepower four-cylinder engine is a 24-horsepower electric motor that can improve efficiency by briefly moving the car on battery power and providing regenerative braking.
New improvements and features also extend to the interior. The new car boasts a cabin dominated by an 11.9-inch screen in front of the driver's seat and a 14.5-inch infotainment screen. If there is not enough screen, Audi will allow drivers to add a 10.9-inch display right in front of the passenger seat.
However, the biggest change that Audi has made to the A4 is that the new model isn't called the A4 anymore. The compact sedan from Audi is now called the A5.
The newly named 2025 Audi A5 represents its new model naming system. In May 2023, Audi CEO Markus Duesmann told German auto magazine Auto Bild that future models with odd numbers like 'A5' will represent gas-powered cars, while even-numbered names like 'A4' will be reserved for its electric models.
Prior to the 2025 model's introduction, the Audi A5 was sold as a coupe and convertible variant of the A4 sedan since 2007. The 2009 model year of the A5 saw the introduction of a "Sportback" model, featuring a sleek roofline, four doors, and a liftback tailgate.
According to Motor1, Audi confirmed that production of the 2-door coupe and convertible A5 will end after the 2024 model year.
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Audi is not the only German luxury automaker that has changed its naming scheme to reflect the presence of electric versions of popular models.
In May 2024, BMW Brand Senior VP Bernd Körber confirmed to BMW Blog that the brand is dropping the little "i" at the end of model names like the 430i, and instead using it as a designator for its electric models.
Currently, BMW's electric models like the i4 and i5 have the small letter before the number to designate that it is an electric car, but Körber noted that the new order of numbers and letters has a new meaning.
“Historically, even though our interpretation of BMW i was always different, it’s more innovation, not necessarily only electric, and we historically had [fuel] injection at the end [of the badge]," Körber said. "We would like to keep ‘i’ as an asset, and we would like to keep it as a signature to indicate you’re driving an electric car and that was the logic that we had.”
Audi has yet to release further pricing and economy figures for the US-bound 2025 Audi A5 Sedan, but it is expected to hit dealers' lots in the spring of 2025.
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