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  A6 mules have been testing for around a year but the real cars are out now, with heavy camouflage during the day and boring black bodywork for after-dark work.

The new-model pipeline is always full at Audi and the next car scheduled to pop out of the end is the all-new A6, sometime from the middle of next year.

But Carparazzi ensures we don't need to wait until 2011 to see what the 2012-model A6 will look like.  It's easy to see that the next model is more angular and aggressive than the current A6, which has always struggled to make a major impact against the 5-Series BMW and Benz's E Class.

A6 mules have been testing for around a year but the real cars are out now, with heavy camouflage during the day and boring black bodywork for after-dark work.  The frontal treatment is obviously new, with angular headlights cutting across the nose and a deeper front spoiler.

New doorhandles and side mirrors are also obvious in the pictures of the prototypes.  But the biggest change to the twenty-twelve A6 is under the bodywork, where the `top hat' is fitted above an all-new Audi chassis package.

Carparazzi says the current car is built up from the C-chassis used by the Volkswagen Group but the new car will used Audi's own MLB modular aluminium chassis.  The petrol engine range should include the supercharged 3.0-litre V6 and a new 4.0-litre V8 Audi is currently working on with turbodiesel choice as well.

Two new transmissions will be fitted to the next A6 an eight-speed automatic and a seven-speed dual-clutch manumatic.  Production should begin in the first half of 2011 at Audi's factory at Neckarsulm in Germany, with a public preview likely at the Geneva Motor Show in March.