You wonder if car designers ever get sick of designing cars; after all, Bangle quit the biz at the top of his game, no?

Perhaps the higher-ups at Audi have wondered the same thing. To stimulate creativity and celebrate their 100th anniversary, Audi recently tasked their design team with designing a grand piano, above, in conjunction with Austrian piano manufacturer Bosendorfer.

"You can imagine the respect with which we approached the challenge of redesigning a musical instrument," says Wolfgang Egger, Head of Audi Group Design. But he and his team made a virtue out of necessity: "The limitations we faced were necessary as a means of stimulating our creativity. We were obliged to study the instrument in depth, and develop an all-embracing concept from the very start. The project was a useful source of experience for our young designers, and will benefit them later when they work on car design."

The piano, which debuted at an Audi ceremony in Germany earlier this month, will reportedly go on sale for about US $140,000.

via autoblog