Audi sales are tanking. The company looked at this problem and decided the solution was a three-row SUV called the Q9. Not a better product. Not a lower price. Another f*cking SUV with more rows.
The Q9 joins the Q3, Q5, Q7, and Q8. Audi's naming strategy is what happens when Germans try to be creative. They picked numbers. Sequential numbers. Then they skipped Q6 because that would make too much sense. Now they're adding Q9, which will slot above the Q8 but somehow also compete with the Q7 because both have three rows. Clear as mud.
The brand blames tariffs and the EV market shift for poor sales. Tariffs hit every luxury automaker. The EV slide hurt everyone. Yet somehow Audi is the only one acting like a three-row Q9 will fix structural problems. Mercedes sells cars. BMW sells cars. Audi sells excuses and alphabet soup.
Retail traders will see this headline and think it's bullish. More product means more revenue, right? Wrong. Audi already makes seventeen different models and still can't move metal. Adding an eighteenth won't help when the first seventeen are gathering dust on dealer lots. But sure, let's celebrate the Q9 like it's Henry Ford inventing the assembly line instead of a German boardroom throwing darts at a product matrix.
The Q9 will start around seventy grand. It will have three rows that nobody uses. The third row will fit children under four feet tall or adults you secretly hate. Audi will market it as spacious. Dealers will offer six thousand in incentives by month three. And some guy named Derek will lease one because he thinks the badge makes him look successful.
New product may help, says the summary. New product may also be irrelevant when your brand's entire problem is that nobody wants what you're already selling.
Photo by on Unsplash
Leave a Comment