A football is always a football! It’s just as easy to play the game with a vintage leather model made in 1954 as with a modern football! And the same applies to the good old-fashioned table soccer strikers. Solid wood, 22 players and the traditional green pitch – fun and enjoyment is guaranteed. The Audi design team still thought it was worthwhile reassessing the rectangular table and decided a rounded shape would be better. Two years ago the Audi Design soccer table was still a study from Audi Concept Design in Munich and now a small number is in production. Who says table soccer can’t look stylish? In professional soccer, these days the football is made of polyurethane, not leather.
In addition to the sleek new styling, the Audi Design soccer table of course also represents “Vorsprung durch Technik”. The materials, workmanship and technical interpretation all satisfy the highest standards. Aluminium and high-strength plastic fittings are added to the handcrafted wooden core. A key factor: the table meets the same high standards demanded in professional tournaments. This combination of function and design is a first in table football.
“It’s an attractive task to transfer our cars’ design language to day-to-day articles, and the results are often surprising!”, comments Wolfgang Egger, Head of Audi Group Design. “The Audi Design soccer table features large-area, flowing surfaces and sharp, clearly defined lines. The brushed aluminium frame creates an exciting contrast to the white body. Our design team looks forward to displaying one of these tables at our Concept Design studio in Munich.”
For this project, nothing was left to chance. At the Audi training workshops in Ingolstadt and Neckarsulm, ten Audi trainees had the task of building ten soccer tables. A year’s painstaking craftsmanship, closely supervised by the Munich design team, was needed before high-precision models were ready. Table football manufacturer, Leonhart, a Bavarian company that has specialized in these popular leisure games since 1949, used the results of this design project to produce a small, exclusive small number of tables. The company’s expertise is crucial. Professional players have tuned their reactions to notice even the slightest differences in how the table behaves.
Thomas Przesdzink,several times German table soccer champion and Chairman of the Bavarian Table Soccer Association, has already tested the new Audi Design table. ?His verdict: “It looks great! That tells us nothing about how it performs, but here I was pleasantly surprised too: this is a very good table. From a sporting viewpoint, it could certainly be used for an official tournament series or for playing in the league of the Bavarian Table Football Federation.”
