If there is any lesson Mercedes has taught us, it is that not all coupe buyers actually want to give up on their passengers’ comfort. Ever since the first generation CLS came out a decade ago, the market for four-door coupes has grown so much that all the major players in the German premium scene cannot do without them. BMW calls them Gran Coupes while Audi insists on using their almost universal Sportback name, the smallest being A5.
Modern automotive designs like Coupe SUVs are not just only a delight to most sporty car lovers; they are a piece of beauty to behold. The TT offering is Audi’s take on the genre, and for once, it has actually been inspired by a proper coupe.
Although, turning the borderline iconic TT into an off-roader may sound strange and like a sacrilege to many, but Audi clearly reckons and admits that mixing TT style with Q5 attitude will be profitable as it plays around with expanding the TT into a family of vehicles.
The TT off-road concept provides a glimpse of how we might imagine a new model in the future TT family. With the new variant, the concept makes use of Audi’s modular transverse matrix or MQB architecture, while the Q3-sized body is also a steel-aluminum hybrid in typical TT fashion.
Classic design elements abound in the TT. These come in the form of an emphasised wheel arches, short overhangs, high metal-to-glass ratio and a continuous arc window line. Lower body cladding and arch extensions in contrasting grey reinforce the crossover look.
The concept is 80m shorter than Q3, and runs 21-inch rims covered in Nappa leathers and Alcantra, seats four passengers in comfort. The dashboard shares much with the new TT including air vents incorporating air-conditioning controls and Audi’s virtual cockpit with its customisable 12.3-inch digital instrument display.
Flow-through centre tunnel features practical elements nicked from the Q family. Power-folding individual rear seats and custom boot-mounted 1.8-scale radio-controlled (RC) crazy concept stuff emphasising the sportier side.
Beneath the Sonora Yellow outer panels is a plug-in hybrid drivetrain comprising a 40kW electric motor siamised between a 2.0-liter turbo-charged petrol engine and a six-speed dual clutch gearbox driving the front wheels.
A second, more powerful electric motor drives the rear wheels and a 12kWh lithium-ion battery provides an electric-only range of 50km, and can be recharged via a wall box outlet or wirelessly using Audi’s contactless inductive charging process.
Total system output is 300kW, which grants the off-road TT serious performance. Zero to 100kph takes 5.2 seconds, top speed is a governed 250kph and combined cycle fuel usage can be as low as 1.9-liter/100km. A four-seater, fuel sipping, high performance TT that will not scrape its nose on kerbs does not sound like such a bad idea after all.
The styling of the Audi TT began in the spring of 1994 at the Volkswagen Group design center in California, the United States and was first shown as a concept car at the 1995 Frankfurt Motor Show. The design is credited to J Mays and Freeman Thomas with Hartmut Warkuss, Peter Schreyer, Martin Smith and Romulus Rost contributing to the award-winning interior design.
A previously unused laser beam welding adaptation, which enabled seamless design features on the first-generation TT, delayed its introduction. Audi did not initially offer any type of automatic transmission option for the TT.
However, from 2003, a dual clutch six-speed direct-shift gearbox became available, with the United Kingdom TT variants becoming the world’s first user of a dual clutch transmission configured for a right-hand drive vehicle, although the outright world first for a road car equipped with a dual clutch transmission was claimed earlier by a VW group platform-mate.
Historically, the Audi TT takes its name from the successful motor racing tradition of NSU in the British Isle of Man TT (Tourist Trophy) motorcycle race. NSU began competing in the TT in 1911, and later merged into the company now known as Audi.
It also follows the NSU 1000TT, 1200TT and TTS cars of the 1960s in taking their names from the race. The TT name has also been attributed to the phrase “Technology & Tradition”. All Audi model range is sold and serviced by the Audi Centre, an automotive subsidiary of the Stallion group.
MIKE OCHONMA
