Audi TT (2014)

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Audi TT (2014) in detail: news, prices, specs

By Ben Barry

First Official Pictures

08 August 2014 

Could the third-generation Audi TT finally be about to live up to the mini-me Porsche 911 billing that its looks have always promised but its dynamics never delivered? As tech development boss Oscar Da Silva Martins talks CAR round a cutaway of the car’s monocoque ahead of its launch in November, it seems a tantalising possibility. With a clever mixture of aluminium and steel, the new TT’s kerbweight is not only some 140kg shy of the iconic Mk1 of 1998 but also 50kg lighter than its steel-and-aluminium-based predecessor, despite extra equipment that boosts both safety and convenience. ‘We’re confident that the 2.0-litre TFSI model with front-wheel drive and manual transmission will be the best in class,’ says Da Silva Martins.

Torsional stiffness ramps up by 25% compared with the Mk2, the centre of gravity is lowered by 10mm, and a revised Quattro system switches the dopey pressure accumulator for an electric pump to fast-track the optional all-wheel-drive system’s responses. Clearly, we’re counting eggs and not chickens here ahead of our crucial first drive, but these are quantifiable facts that can only make the TT a sharper, stiffer, more responsive car to drive.

Being based on the VW Group’s new modular MQB platform, the TT remains the Alan Sugar of the coupe world, the boy-done-good that hails from humble beginnings. But to overplay the Volkswagen-Golf-in-fancy-dress commonality that this suggests – and was certainly true of the Mk1 TT – is to both mislead the layman and do a disservice to Audi’s engineers.

So while the TT’s front end is MQB-based, the suspension pick-up points are altered due to the TT’s wider track; at the rear, MQB’s longitudinal supports make an appearance and the suspension pick-up points are unchanged, but the rest is bespoke, including the boot floor, which uniquely among MQB models houses the battery; at 2505mm, the TT’s wheelbase is 37mm longer than before – despite overall length barely changing at 4180mm – but it’s also some 132mm shorter than the Golf’s. This is not a Golf wearing a fancy top hat.

Marko Weigel, project manager of the body and interior, explains that the monocoque is a mix of hot-shaped steel (17%), aluminium panels (15%, including all hinged panels and the roof), extruded aluminium section (6%) and aluminium castings (6%), the remaining components produced from cold-formed steel. The TT makes leaps over even the current 991-generation Porsche 911 with its aluminium/steel hybrid; the 911’s A-pillars, for instance, are high-strength steel to ensure sufficient rigidity; the TT’s glasshouse structure is aluminium, reducing weight and therefore keeping kilos concentrated closer to the ground for better handling without compromising safety.

While the TT’s weight has fallen, its power outputs have blossomed. A range of four-cylinder engines, with either six-speed manual or dual-clutch automatic gearboxes, are on average 14% more powerful than their predecessors. The entry-level 2.0-litre TFSI manages 227bhp, 273lb ft, 42mpg and 158g/km, while the range-topping TTS achieves 306bhp, 280lb ft, 40mpg and 164g/km – 306bhp and 40mpg! The 2.0-litre TDI – which has previously accounted for a sixth of all TT sales – gets 181bhp and 280lb ft along with a wallet-pleasing 67mpg and best-in-class 110g/km.

There’s Progressive Steering as standard, which speeds up the ratio the more you wind on lock; third-generation magneto-rheological adaptive dampers are standard on the TTS and optional on other models to ensure compliance and help keep the tyres – from 17 to 20 inches! – in contact with the road better than their rather hit-and-miss predecessors; the stability control also doubles as a torque-vectoring system, channelling torque from the inside wheel to the outer wheel for more incisive cornering. Chassis engineer Michael Bar even makes claims of Quattro models ‘drifting’, a term only applicable to its predecessor when an especially hot latte misted up an owner’s designer glasses and prompted a surprise lane-change.

You have to give Audi’s engineers credit for trying so hard, because they could have called in sick and had almost no bearing on the TT’s sale figures: stand-out design has been at the TT’s core since the 1995 concept forgot to visit the frumpy frock department ahead of production.

But while the Mk3 appears to combine the geometric playfulness of the Mk1 with the added muscle definition of the Mk2, it’s the Mk1 that designer Dany Garand continually refers back to, elevating it to Alex Ferguson status while giving the Mk2 a David Moyes-style drubbing.

‘The Mk1 had a very uncompromising design language,’ says Garand. ‘The Mk2 was more generic and in line with the rest of the range. The new TT is more of a specific architecture to define it as a sports car in its own right again.’

Garand lists the TT’s trademark styling cues as the notches on the bonnet, the well-defined wheelarches, the solid, geometric shapes, the aero-style fuel-filler cap with its allen-key-bolt detailing; he also explains that the TT must tip the typical scale of one-third cabin/two-thirds body slightly more in favour of the body.

The line at the bottom of the Mk2’s sill is cited as an example of where it strayed from the purity of Mk1. ‘The Mk1 was very straight and parallel to the ground,’ he says. ‘The Mk2 was swept up, more of a family look. The Mk3 returns to a flatter line like the Mk1.’

The roof was another key difference: the Mk1’s canopy was literally welded on top of the body, the distinct join between the two echoing the geometric wheelarches. The Mk2’s body was one piece, the roof flowing seamlessly towards the lower flanks. The Mk3 is a combination of the two: the roof and body are one piece, but a distinct edge stamped just below the glasshouse mimics the Mk1.

However, instead of the Mk1’s symmetrical silhouette with its rounded nose and tail, the Mk3’s nose is more aggressive – like the Mk2, but Garand doesn’t stress the connection – and its tail more alert – like the Mk2… – to create that hungry, ready-to-attack-other-road-users stance that’s so popular these days.

‘We’ve retained the geometry – the relationship of the add-on wheelarches to the body, for instance – but not the symmetry,’ he says. ‘We wanted more tension and more speed to position the TT as a legitimate sports car.’

Garand describes the exterior as evolutionary, but the interior as revolutionary. The optional sports seats somehow look fast and light before you even sit down on them, and when you do you notice how much closer you are to the floor – 30mm closer than in a Golf – and how comfortable and supported you feel. The trademark jet-engine air-vents re-appear, but the air-con and heated-seat controls are now integrated into their centres, a clever, intuitive step that reduces clutter. This long-standing aeronautical theme has also been expanded to the top of the dash, which mimics an aeroplane wing; even if you fail to pick up on this reference, its suggestion of lightness and agility makes an impression regardless. The same applies to the steering wheel with its crisp muscle definition and airbag packaging that’s 40% more compact – the Mk1 looks like it’s borrowed from a Routemaster bus in comparison – and the gearshift paddles on S-tronic models click with a shorter, more mechanical precision.

While the Mk1 Audi TT shocked the automotive world by the similarity between concept and production models’ exterior design, it’s the Mk3’s infotainment system that repeats the trick this time. Even the name – Virtual Cockpit – suggests we shouldn’t be seeing it in production. But we will.

Against a backdrop of continually evolving smartphones, it’s easy to become blasé about such advances, but consider this: when the Mk2 TT arrived in 2006, Audi thought it reasonable to charge owners around £600 for a sat-nav system that placed red arrows in a letterbox-thin slot; you received a Duke of Edinburgh award at the end of every journey.

Virtual Cockpit combines the instrument binnacle’s essential info – mph, rpm, fuel, water temp – with infotainment features such as sat-nav and multi-media on one 12.3-inch TFT digital screen with a resolution of 1440 x 540 pixels. In Classic mode the speedometer and rev counter are large, with a small sat-nav screen positioned between the two. You can, however, adjust the bias to radically decrease the size of the – still perfectly legible – mph and rpm dials in favour of a near-cinematic sat-nav map; in the range-topping TTS, you can have a 911-style central rev counter too.

You scroll through Virtual Cockpit’s functions either via buttons on the steering wheel or on an MMI controller near the gearstick, and Audi has tried hard to make it more intuitive than current-generation hardware: you now wind the rotary controller clockwise, not anti-clockwise, to zoom in on the sat-nav map; there are fewer button-presses between functions; and you can use quite conversational voice commands to make it do your bidding rather than being straight-jacketed into set phrases.

It is mostly intuitive, but I occasionally found its responses to backwards steps confusing – it didn’t always, well, go back to where I’d been – and the lack of a central screen on the dash might clean up the design, but it also makes it harder for your passenger to enter a sat-nav destination, though it is perfectly possible if they lean over like they’re cribbing at exam time.

Nonetheless, all the signs are that the new TT will better its predecessors by quite some margin. The way you sit, the surfaces you touch, the things that catch your eye both inside and out, all of it reinforces the feeling that you’re about to drive a proper sports car.

All we need now is for Audi’s engineers to prove that you really can judge a book by its cover.