Do you like Audi’s aggressive new corporate double-decker radiator grille, aka ‘the beard’? You’d better if you’ve got any plans to put a new Audi on your shopping list over the next few years.

It’s now certain the Ingolstadt car maker is running with an idea that it’s going to be the grille of grilles, a core identity statement every bit as powerful and unambiguous a BMW’s and Mercedes’, and twice as striking. 

Soon you’ll be able to line up the entire range nose to tail and, like it or not, that deep, single-frame trapezoidal grille will be as embedded as the writing in a stick of rock. Until quite recently, this would have been considered a gamble, especially for subtlety-merchants Audi. But, if nothing else, BMW’s design chief Chris Bangle has hauled a sense of post modernism back into car design. It’s a far more daring and eclectic place than it used to be.

Audi’s vision of one grille to rule them all is, naturally, unfolding in episodes. And each new reveal is more fascinating than the last in a ‘does my grille look big on this?’ kind of way.

On the A3, the verdict was a definite maybe. But fittingly for Audi’s most important model, the A4, the result looks pretty much spot on. My guess is that even critics of the new nose will have to admit it’s been superbly integrated this time – perhaps a more successful execution of the shades-of-Nuvolari-concept approach than the oddly frumpy tail-light treatment.