I find most German cars to be average looking at best. I think people tend to ascribe more to the looks because of the performance and fall in love with the brands. If you take the badge out of the equation, most Volkswagen and Audi models don't look better than even significantly cheaper models from Mazda, Kia, Ford, Hyundai, etc. Subaru/Toyota's BRZ/FR-S looks better than anything from Mercedes, BMW, or Audi, putting aside fancier trim or >$100,000 supercars. The A4 is by no means ugly, but it doesn't look unique or particularly beautiful to me. And Hyundai's Veloster looks better than the GTI, in my opinion, but I'll grant that it's a bit unusual and subjective... but the GTI doesn't look better than most of the other hatches from its competitors, either.
Audi's reliability has gone up the past few years, though... possibly better in that regard than the brands I've named.
EDIT: I'll give a pass to Porsche, though, because they basically have one evolutionary design (and it's a good one). Otherwise I'm much more a fan of British (Lotus, Aston Martin, Jaguar, and McLaren) and Italian (Ferrari, Maserati, and to a lesser degree Lamborghini and Alfa Romeo) car design, as well as a few American car models (mostly muscle cars and of course the Corvette) than German cars of any price.