Some cars these days look stocky and badly proportioned; and that's hardly surprising.

Consider this for a moment. Cars have to have a lot of safety equipment on board and have enough space for it's occupants. You then have to consider what type of car it is i.e. is it a hatchback, saloon, estate, convertible, SUV supermini and so on? Money is also a factor. Do you have enough money to sit at a drawing board designing the front doors again and again and again? Most likely, no.

So the A5, a four door saloon with a coupe body style. That couldn't have been easy to do. First you need all the space in the backseats so that rear passengers can sit in comfort, as they expect from an Audi. So immediately the roof line cannot taper too early as it does in most coupes. But you can't leave it too late because if it does it won't look like a coupe. The A5s solution is that it doesn't have an aggressive taper and starting it off really slowly before finally increasing its angle behind the heads of the passengers. Good, you have a coupe with four doors.

Safety equipment is jam packed in this car. Take it from me, if you crashed into a wall in this, you might be safer than you would be if you crashed into a cloud, in a F1 car. With that in mind you have to wonder, how is there enough space inside for four people? Well that might have something to do with the fact that it's deceptively big, over four meters long to be exact. It is a big car and yet it doesn't look it. Safety equipment with good space, fantastic.

And fortunately for Audi they did have enough money to sit at the drawing board. I love the wavy line down the edge of the car and the curvy elegance that it creates. To be honest the whole thing looks taught and curvy. Just wonderful.

In bringing all these elements together in one neat package Audi has managed to create the illusion of effortless elegance.

Then again this is all just my opinion on the matter, what's yours?

H Glen - fully agree I purchased a new sportback in dec and love it. it looks great from all differnt angles.