What are Audi car enthusiasts buying today?

Other than the R8 certainly a niche car, the allroad almost a cult car and the only wagon Audi sells state side and unless you drop the back seat in your A7 and use it as a 4 door hatch, Audi sales for their sedans have all been lower year to date Read Article Here through November even though they have had record sales for the year. That leaves the A5 the only “enthusiasts” car with increased sales, even the TT’s sales seem to be in a free fall down over 26% year to date. Should the question be posed, Is Audi no longer drawing enthusiasts to the Marque? Of course there are the S and RS iterations of the 4 door sedans present and past and Avants (clearly enthusiasts vehicles but that is begging the question, with Avants not available here).Have the enthusiasts decided to hold on to what they have or decided to spend their hard earned dollars on other marques? Are there insufficient new Audi owners being drawn to the brand’s sedans to increase year to year’s sales until new models are brought out? BMW sales have been in the tank across the board for the entire year except for November so buyers are not headed to the other Bavarian auto maker. Interestingly enough the trend to SUV’s does not seem to be slowing and new buyers are coming to the Audi and BMW brand for those vehicles. Unfortunately, the push to hybrids Audi’s foray into that field in the American market has been a dismal failure. So where are the enthusiasts going? Surly they are still out there but they are not buying sedans or TT’s

Auto clubs consist of primarily enthusiasts and each marque’s club has numerous common threads but is also significantly different as are their cars and enthusiasts. I am not sure that one can totally defines an enthusiasts in one club could work to define that in another but there are certainly some common denominators and one being loyalty to the marque, no matter what its iteration. When one thinks of a what car enthusiasts would drive in the late forties to early sixties it is a bit simpler, one generally is gravitated to the sports cars of the era, mostly two seaters and open aired. Perhaps the paradigm has changed, yes there are still two seaters with rag tops, but they are no longer under or marginally powered. At the other end of the spectrum an enthusiast can now drive some pretty fast 2 ton plus SUV’s to go and carve up country roads And as for the S model four door sedan, their handling crispness now far exceeds that of anything even approaching those sport cars of even some of the high performance two door models of the late 70’ and 80’, let alone being a lot safer to do it in. But the sales figures for sedans do not seem to support that. Yes the paradigm had changed and so has the auto enthusiast, he can now I am beginning to perhaps believe drive a SUV as shown where the increases sales are showing up. Ironically in Germany if it is a SQ5 it is even diesel powered.