This is how the elaborate camouflage of the Audi Q6 e-tron was designed and installed

As you know, every single new model that a brand is going to introduce into production goes through different development phases before serial manufacturing begins. These include testing in real traffic conditions, that is, among normal traffic, with the consequent risk that these new models are seen and revealed before their respective official presentations.

That is why all brands choose to cover as much as possible of each of their models by resorting to camouflage techniques, whether with covers or, as is now more common, with vinyl wraps that follow the same design pattern, making it harder for the design lines and main elements to be fully visible. Nowadays it is common for the main brands to use elaborate camouflage designs, as Audi does, which has taken the art of camouflage to a new level.

In recent years we have seen how the vast majority of Audi’s “big presentations” carried a special camouflage design during their development phase, which serves not only its main purpose but also to provoke and draw even more attention to that model, emphasizing the design elements it wants to highlight while hiding others. A recent example is the S1 Hoonitron driven by the late Ken Block, which wore the “livery design” by Marco dos Santos.

Marco is the Brand Design manager at Audi and author of more than 20 special decorations for various models under development and the brand’s prototypes, with the Audi Q6 e-tron being the latest of them, which we were able to see just a few days ago wearing a striking and colorful camouflage. In this case the Q6 e-tron is the star, but dos Santos’s work always starts the same way: from the detailed renders produced by Audi’s exterior designers.

It is then that Marco dos Santos’s team focuses on the elements that make up the model in question and which parts should receive the most attention, and then, like any artist, begins making hand sketches that are eventually transferred to the vehicle through graphics and image software. Over several days, due to the delicate and meticulous work involved, the vehicle is covered with vinyl based on the main idea, which often gets modified or redesigned on the fly.

In the case of the Audi Q6 e-tron, the camouflage design stands out for its use of sharp, high-contrast lines, with large-scale fuchsia radial graphics alongside a detailed geometric mesh and silver stripes. The shapes flow into one another and combine perfectly with the white color that adorns much of its bodywork, even painting important elements such as the wheels, the Singleframe grille, and the rear diffuser in this color.