It's been ages since I've posted, so here's my take on the Bx evolution.

The B6 was a worthy successor to the B5. It should have stayed around a couple of more years. Interior improved over B5.

The B7 was rushed to add the big grill, which I like, but doesn't seem proportionally correct on the B7. Interior same or a bit better with the navigation screen over the B6. One caveat: The RS4 body mods made the B7 really nice. Almost bought that.

The B8 should really be the B7. It looks right as far as lines and grill proportions. Not a big fan of the interior. I'm sure the quality is better, but it has lost the clean lines of the B5-B7's. This interior style was introduced on the recent A6's and I was never a fan of it. The slant in the center dash just looks awkward and cluttered. I mean, really, is it that much better for the driver? The one interior improvement is the center area between the seats. The full MMI control interface is nice. Can't wait to see what an RS4 will look like.

Ideally, I would like to see the B8 RS4 with a pre-B8 interior, although with the B8 MMI interface between the seats. Simple enough, eh?

Almost forgot. Is that an electronic e-brake that I see? Bleh. The whole point of a mechanical emergency brake is to be able to stop the car when hydraulics and electronics fail (and when you're playing in the rain ;).

Amro

it was terrible IMO.

i agree about the A6 and the B8's interior and center console. reminds me of an old eclipse.

And I'm still disappointed that the styling differences between the B7 and B8 are so subtle.

IMO, the B7 was a step backwards after the B6, but I always figured they'd make it up to us with the B8. Turns out the B8 styling is just more of the same (more or less).

Look at the wheelbase comparison. The B8 is much more proportionate. It takes the new Audi styling and correctly applies it to the small sedan.

The B7 was clearly a facelift. It's not terrible, particularly in S/RS trim, but something about it just isn't quite right.

My understanding is that a lot of color-blind people complained to Audi about this one. Color blindness is a lot more common than I'd ever thought until recently two of my friends both told me they're color blind.

Given that nothing was green on the display, why was colorblindness a problem?

The lighting now reminds me of japanese cars

non-red, and it's white, are the gauges.

What was on the B5 that was changed?

On the B5, everything but the headlight indicator LED was red. That one was green.

The dials were red. So, so beautiful. I think the last year or two B5 changed the dials to white.

I guess I prefer more dramatic changes (ala B5 to B6) where the heritage is visible to the trained eye, over subtle changes where it takes a trained eye to see the differences.

They integrated it to bring the A4 inline with the new audi styling.

Had they not done so, the B6->B8 transition would have been as apparent as the B5->B6.

I'm not so sure it takes a trained eye to note that the proportions of the car have changed.

Personally, I love it, and now plan on making it my next car.

is completely different. as is the interior. the only real similarities are the fish mouth.

i mean, i can see the similarities, but hardly what i would call subtle.

The red lighting in Audis and BMWs was supposedly chosen to minimize the changes your eyes had to make adapting to darkness. However, if you are red-green color blind (the most common kind, but there are people who cannot see color at all), those colors end up showing as different values (shades) of gray.

Black/yellow and black/white are the schemes with the highest contrast and that's why they are used a lot in instruments. If you lit things in red, I believe the contrast suffers, and makes the gauges less legible. White and yellow lighting preserve the contrast.

Red/green achromatopes adapt to driving by learning which lights are where: on traffic lights, red on top, green at the bottom, or red on left, green at the bottom. That's why they can still be safe drivers.

Just don't ask them to pick out a tie to match a shirt, or decorate a room. <g>

Interesting. I had one friend in college who was colorblind. I'm an architect. You can imagine the fun we had with him when we were doing watercolor. We never actually let him put brush to paper, but we let him mix some pretty interesting colors before we told him.

Legibility suffers a lot because the edges of the markings smear. The best analogy I can give you is if you normally wear glasses and are trying to read your cell phone display without them at 2 am, having just woken up from a dead sleep.

FWIW, I'm not achromatopic, but I do work in neurology. Just relaying what I've been told. I also read a great book by Oliver Sacks ("Awakenings" - he's also a neurologist) called "The Island of the Color Blind", which describes research he did in the South Pacific where a large population of total achromatopes live. Very interesting reading.

They finally got the B6 right in '05 with the painted lowers. The unpainted lowers made the B6 look like a cheap saturn.

The interior of the B6 was very nice (I have a B6 and B5 in my garage now), but I did prefer the B5 interior.

As a B5 owner for 4 years and now a B6 owner for almost 2.

The B6 better, the differences aren't that great anyway. But it's better.