The Audi TT is in my opinion one of the best
styled cars in the past 30 years. And I’ve put my money where my mouth is
– I owned one for 9 years. I loved every minute of it,
even taking it around the track. But I’m waiting for the next car with a
style so unique that I’ve just got to own it. It’s a car that’s spanned four decades
through three different guises and ended production in November 2023. So, just where did the inspiration for the
TT come from, what disaster struck just after it launched and did the second and third generation
improve on the TT formula? This is the Audi TT story. [music] The 1991 Quattro Spyder concept gave Audi
a hint that a two-door sports car might be a money maker. The reception at the Frankfurt Motor Show
was so good, the concept received thousands of pre-orders. It would never come to fruition – this was
a mid-engined car not based on any other platform and so the cost to bring it to market would
be too great. But what if they could use an existing car
platform? Audi were working on a new small platform
that would be shared by the fourth generation Volkswagen Golf, Jetta, Škoda Octavia, SEAT
León, second generation SEAT Toledo, and Audi A3 – Audi’s new small car. If they could use this for the Volkswagen
Golf GTI, why not a new compact Audi sports car? Over in France Renault was undergoing a styling
renaissance all of their own under the hand of Patrick le Quément. He’d delighted / annoyed the world, depending
on which side of the fence you’re on with the Twingo, and the Renault Laguna and Scenic
concepts had shown this was a new Renault with big ambitions. Their next concept was equally startling – the
Argos that was penned by Jean-Pierre Ploué who would go on to become lead designer at
Stellantis. Patrick saw a lot of the German Bauhaus styling
in that car, but being a French company they could hardly claim it was inspired by Germans! So, this new Argos concept would be inspired
by the French equivalent of the Bauhaus movement, L'Esprit Nouveau and would be shown at the 1994
Geneva Motor Show. As Patrick explains, the Argos got a lot of interest: “Now when we presented it at Geneva
this car had an enormous impact! You wouldn't imagine! I've never seen so many people on the stand,
and mostly they were German speaking people. And I would say that there was everyone from
Audi was there, and lots of people from other German companies.” One of Audi’s designers, Freeman Thomas
had Bauhaus design aspirations of his own, so Audi asked him to come up with a design
for a small sports car. He’d been working with J Mays to develop
“Concept One” that would become the new Beetle. It had been shown just a few months earlier
at the North American Auto Show with the cabriolet version shown at the same time as the Argos. Just two months later he had a Bauhaus inspired
design to show to Audi. And he was clear to draw a line between this
car and the cartoonish Concept One Beetle design. He wrote this “Coupe should feel serious
and not childish”. It was also very different from Audi’s current
and upcoming design language. The new Audi A6 and A8 that launched the year
the TT was conceived, the Audi A4 that would launch a year later, and the Audi A3 that
would come a year after that all had the same styling. This new Bauhaus inspired coupé, also inspired
by Audis from the 1930s, was a completely new style. J Mays worked with Freeman on the design. He said: “it was a systemic Bauhaus approach. I think the TT is unique in that respect,
because it’s a non-automotive design language, it’s architectural. It’s very geometric, as though it was milled
out of a solid piece of aluminium. There are no flowing lines in Bauhaus architecture
or furniture. Everything else at the time was fluid – everyone
was trying to make things look as though they could go faster and faster. We just took a completely industrial approach." The original vision was an open top, but it developed into a coupé, a soft top roadster,
spyder, and the same spyder with a hard top. This was then whittled down to just two ideas
– a coupé and an open top. The team created a series of quarter-scale
mock-ups that were presented to the board. With the promise it would use a shortened
version of the Audi A3 chassis, and so wouldn’t cost a fortune to produce, the car was enthusiastically
approved. Inside Audi didn’t make the same mistake
Ford made with its retro-styled Thunderbird who’s uninspiring interior borrowed heavily
from the standard Ford parts bin. The buzz word for the TT’s design was “absolute”
– no compromise. Romulus Rost realised an interior that was
an equally absolute design statement inside. After all, that’s where the owner would
spend most of their time, and the tactile feel of unique high-quality components was
important. On the test drive of course a potential owner
also spends most of their time inside the vehicle, and car buying, like house buying,
has a large emotional element to it. So, the team leant in to the Bauhaus design,
with aluminium on the major controls – no cheap plastic here! Aluminium was chosen not just because it was
associated with Audi’s cars – it was used for the chassis on the new Audi A8 – but it
also seemed the perfect choice for a sports car, being commonly used in motorsports. So, the fuel filler cap would use the circle
motif in aluminium and the same design was carried forward to the aluminium air vents
inside. For the roadster the team decided on something
a little different – the idea of using the course stitching and leather from a baseball
glove. As the US was a big potential market for Audi’s
new car this made a lot of sense. Volkswagen always had a deep relationship
with Porsche. They’d built a sports car together in the
late 60s – the 914, and there was a proposal to make a Porsche version of VW’s new Bauhaus
creation. It made a lot of sense – sharing the cost
of development for a car that would have a relatively low volume. Designs were created and there was a big meeting
between Porsche and Volkswagen that didn’t go well, maybe because Porsche were already
working on their own entry level sports car – the Boxster. Afterwards, Porsche came back with several
demands – the VW version couldn’t have more than 135hp (100 kW) whereas the Porsche
version would be over 200hp (149 kW) with Quattro four wheel drive,
borrowed from Audi of course. This was a non-starter for Volkswagen and
the whole idea was abandoned. By spring 1995 the team had created a full
size clay of the coupé and the interior. They measured the final shape, took the roof
off and measured it again. They now had the final shape of the coupé
and roadster. Sharing the A3 platform meant it would be
easier to use its range of engines as well – the 1.8L four cylinder. But Audi would go with the more potent version
from the A4 that produced 150hp (110 kW) for the coupé and a more potent 210hp (154 kW)
version for the roadster. Audi was synonymous with its Quattro four
wheel drive system. It had been adapted for the A3 platform, so
it was natural to offer that on the TT as well. It was decided to show the new car at the
1995 Frankfurt Motor Show and Audi handed the work to build the concept off to Italdesign
in Turin. The work took four months, and was ready just
a month before the show. There were a few hiccups before it was shown
– the electric windows gave out and the passenger door refused to open, but these
problems were swiftly resolved, and the new Audi TT appeared to a rapturous reception. This was a car just a radical as Renault’s
Argos, but clearly closer to production – was it Audi’s intention to sell this car to
the public? Where post war Porsches had a look of a “squashed
Beetle”, not that surprising as they were designed by the same person, Audi’s new
TT shared the same simple lines as the updated Volkswagen Beetle, again squashed, but with
a mature image that harked back to Audis 1930s heritage. TT, as Audi explained, stood for
“tradition and technology”. The press and public called for this car to
be produced now, but Audi were stony faced. The reason became clear 7 weeks later when
Audi unveiled the TTS concept. They wanted to get the public’s reaction
to both cars before making their judgement, although the reaction from the initial unveiling
made this maybe the easiest decision Audi’s management had ever had to make! Once the TTS had made its debut, it was a
foregone conclusion. Both cars would make it to production. That’s not to say that within Audi the TT
didn’t have its detractors who saw the shape as ugly, or at least inappropriate for Audi. They saw the company as technology-led, with
styling taking an understated back seat. But as one of the TT’s proponents said “We’ve
progressed from understatement to statement”. As Abraham Lincoln may have said – “you
can please some of the people all the time, all of the people some of the time, but you
can’t please all of the people all of the time.” So, if you’ve got a sizeable subset of people
raving for your product, produce it as fast as possible! Now began the serious business of turning
the TT concept into a production car. The engine’s power was deemed not enough
to give the TT the necessary excitement, maybe because the car was coming in 100kg (220 lb)
heavier than an A3 with the same engine, so the base model increased from 150hp to 178hp
(132 kW), with the top of the range now at 222hp (165 kW), producing 0-60 times of 7.1s
and 6.4s respectively. This being a driver’s car, the only gearbox
would be a 6 speed manual. The initial idea was to only offer Quattro
four wheel drive, but Audi changed their mind – producing an entry level front wheel drive
5 speed manual to tempt customers in the door, and me being the frugal penny pincher, that’s
the one I plumped for. With no space at Audi’s main design centre
in Ingolstadt the team decamped to separate facilities, and that separation maybe helped
keep the uniqueness of this car. It wasn’t just an A4 made a little smaller
with a hatchback, or an extended A6 with more luxury, this was something unique and different. Although the final production car would look
almost identical to the concept, the team had to start from scratch to create a car
that could be built en mass rather than a very pretty one-off. One noticeable difference was the addition
of a rear quarterlight which gave the TT more daylight in the cramped rear seats. Normally a rear spoiler would keep the car
planted at high speeds, but the team created panels underneath the car that eliminated
that need, keeping the “absolute” shape of the original concept. Nothing was too much work to keep that “absolute”
shape. On the coupé it proved to be difficult to
manufacture the sharp transition between the rear of the roof and the body. The normal solution would be to cover it with
a chrome or a plastic strip, but this would have compromised the style. Ten people worked on and off over 2 years
to come up with a manufacturing solution that produced a no-compromise shape. The team was given a tight deadline. Just 12 months from the first concept being
shown, a pre-production car needed be driveable. Even with using a standard chassis and transmission
this was an aggressive goal. What’s more, the A3 suspension used on the
concept was found to be, well, like driving an A3, and the brakes couldn’t cope with
the additional power. The team had to develop new suspension that
gave the car the sporty handling it deserved. [music] The Audi TT launched at the Paris Motor Show
in the autumn of 1998 and the public rejoiced – finally they could own the TT, and Audi
hadn’t watered down the design. They were surprised to find the tiny car had
a surprisingly large boot that was even larger with the rear seats folded down. Cars started rolling out of Audi’s new factory
in Hungary that had already been producing the 4-cylinder engine used by the TT. The TT design was so loved in fact, that companies
like Banham designs decided to create their own “love letter” to the styling – the
X99 which might look the part, but underneath it was actually an Austin Metro! Audi took a dim view to what they saw as a
blatant rip off and told them to stop. With the coupé launched, the following year
the open top arrived, now renamed the TT Roadster. The soft top had the option of being manual
or electric but the extra space meant there were no rear seats. The playful touch of baseball glove stitching
also made it to the production car’s interior. Audi had a hit car on their hands, but very
quickly ran into a crisis. There were a series of crashes, some fatal
at high speed due to the rear wheels losing grip. It seems when cornering the car could swerve
abruptly, something that could catch out inexperienced drivers. Audi’s blurb had confidently stated they’d
fixed rear instability without the need of a rear spoiler using panels underneath the car. That was clearly false. The company rushed to fix it – all subsequent
cars got revised suspension, included stability control or “ESP” as standard, and most
importantly each new car got a rear spoiler. Existing owners could come in for a retrofit. Purists decried the spoiler ruined the TT’s
lines, but it made the car safer to drive. The TT was a lot of fun, and in sports trim
it won the German DTM series in 2002, but the consumer version always lacked power compared
to rivals like the Nissan 350Z that launched in 2002. So, in 2003 the TT got a larger 3.2L VR6 engine
delivering 247hp (184 kW) that got to 60 in under 6 seconds. Audi also started offering an automatic DSG
or Direct Shift Gearbox. This gave the automatic almost instantaneous
gear shifting, meaning for most people the automatic accelerated faster than the manual. Audi’s coupé got faster in 2005 with the
limited edition TT Quattro Sport. The 1.8L increased its power to 237hp (177 kW). After ditching the spare tyre, rear parcel
shelf, rear seats and air conditioning the new TT accelerated as quickly as the 3.2L VR6
making some wondering, why not just buy that car? Maybe the sick paint scheme – OK – it
had a black roof! – persuaded 1,165 customers to part with
their money. A year earlier Audi had announced they were
working on a second generation TT. The public got a hint of what the design might
look like with the Audi Shooting Brake concept in 2005 with its Renault Mégane posterior. The new TT broke cover a year later. Some manufacturers chose to leave iconic shapes
almost the same, like successive versions of the new MINI. Some chose to evolve the design, such as the
Mazda MX-5. That’s the direction Audi chose to take. The designer, Walter de Silva who’d penned
the glorious Alfa Romeo 156 decided to move away from the Bauhaus theme with a “grown
up” body, reusing and reinterpreting design elements from the original car. He also wanted it to look sportier. This coming from the man who’d just penned
the fabulous Audi R8. Customers wanted more interior space, and
the designers took this on board. The goal was to make the cabin more airy while
keeping it intimate – the original car’s slit-like front window felt, to me at least,
like sitting in a tank. The dashboard was an evolution of the original
design, now with space for a large screen to allow for a decent navigation system. The same could be said for the exterior that
shook off its Bauhaus styling for something closer to the rest of the Audi family. Audi’s mantra for the second generation
was “it’s sportier and it’s lighter”, but although the new aluminium space frame
chassis was 90kg (198lb) lighter than the previous car, when all the bells and whistles
were added to the base model ended up 20kg (44lb) heavier. The original TT vision didn’t include a
spoiler, so the new car had one that popped up at at high speeds to keep the car stable. The handling was improved, and got even better
with the optional “MagneRide” active suspension from Delphi. The engine list started off with a 2.0L and
the previous 3.2L, both a little faster and a little more fuel efficient. It would be joined by a 1.8L in 2007 along
with the open top Roadster. The new cars improved handling meant it now
drove as good as it looked. The press loved it – it won Top Gear’s
Coupé of the year and Fifth Gear’s Car of the Year in 2006. What Car? crowned it best Coupé of the Year
in 2007 and for the next 6 years. In 2007 Audi showed off the TT Clubsport Quattro
concept – an extreme version of the TT with no roof or windscreen to speak of, and you’d
better live somewhere that never rains because there was no soft top, and with low rollover
hoops you took your life in your hands with this 300hp (220 kW) beast. There was talk of a limited production run
and Audi updated the concept with a taller windscreen a year later, but the concept never
made it to production. What the Audi did get was a diesel engine
combining great fuel economy with a good 0-60 time of just over 7 seconds. You also got a diesel rattle to go with your
tuned TT exhaust burble. For those wanting more performance, the TTS
boosted the 2.0L engine to 268hp (200 kW) getting to 60 around 5 seconds, and a year
later the TT RS arrived with 335hp (250 kW), arriving at 60mph in 4.3 seconds. To do this it used a heavily modified version
of the 2.5L 5-cylinder engine from the US version of the Jetta. Audi hoped these models would breathe some
more excitement into the range, but although sales of the second generation car initially
matched the first generation, they quickly dropped off and the TTS and the TT RS didn’t
help them recover. In 2010 the TT got some small mid-cycle refreshes
such as new paint options and revised headlights. The 3.2L VR6 was dropped. It didn’t seem to make much sense as the
2.0L engine was faster and more economical. We might think that autonomous cars are a
recent thing, but in 2010 Audi let a TTS drive itself up Pikes Peak, with the help of Oracle,
and according to this picture a Netgear Wireless Access Point. It completed the trip at the breakneck average
speed of 45mph (72 km/h)! The first the public got to see of the third
generation was the interior at the 2014 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The reason? Well, Audi wanted to show off its high-tech
all-digital instrument cluster – one of the first cars to get one. It allowed Audi to remove the central screen,
but it meant it needed one of those mousy handwriting recognition joystick controller
things next to the gearstick, so you could enter text like you’re using a Palm Pilot. Other than the screen, the new interior was
an evolution of the second generation car. That car had three central air vents meant
to look like jet engines, and the new interior took that to the next logical level, looking
even more like tiny little jet engines with displays in the vents showing the temperature. Like the rest of Audi’s range, the manual
handbrake was gone, replaced with the dreaded flippy button that seemed to take forever
to activate. A month later Audi teased sketches of what
the car would look like and a month after that the final car appeared at the
2014 Geneva Motor Show. Like previous cars it shared the platform
with the A3 and a slew of other cars from the Volkswagen family. The shape was clearly an evolution from the
previous generation, but it also toed the Audi party line, with styling cues that would
show up on future Audi models, but this made it much less distinct than the original. By putting the car on another diet it was
now lighter than both the second and the first generation car. With the combination of 2.0L petrol and diesel
engines, it allowed the car to become even faster and more fuel efficient than the previous
generation. And when the press got to drive it they found
the performance and handling matched the looks, but there were better handling cars on the
market. 6 months later the Roadster arrived with an
electric folding soft top with improved sound proofing. Along with the new car came a series of concepts. First was the TT quattro sport with 420hp
(309 kW). Next was the TT Sportback. The TT grew a set of rear doors making it
look less like something out of a Bauhaus styling guide and more like the current A3
sedan. Then there was the Audi TT Offroad that turned
the TT into what a next generation Q3 might look like. By this time the original Bauhaus lines had
all but disappeared, but it had the TT’s interior, so it must be a TT. These concepts and the third generation car
showed that the TT had abandoned all roots of the “absolute” styling of the original
car. This was a small coupé with Audi corporate
styling. It wasn’t the personal expression that had
drawn customers to the original car. Not surprisingly, none of these concepts reached
fruition, and customers failed to fall in love with the third generation TT with lacklustre
sales. Having said that, sales tend to go down over
time, as can be seen if you overlay Mazda MX-5 sales, but it’s clear that the third
generation car didn’t generate the same level of excitement as the original TT. To try to generate that excitement Audi gave
the car yet more power. The TT clubsport turbo concept generated 600hp
(441 kW) from a 2.5L 5-cylinder, giving it stupidly fast acceleration that most definitely
needed a rear spoiler to keep the back end planted! That would remain just a concept, but in 2016
you could buy the new version of the TT RS, again with a 2.5L 5-cylinder engine driven
through all four wheels, generating “only” 395hp (294 kW) with a sub 4 second time to
60mph – faster than the previous generation. But maybe, just maybe, customers weren’t
looking for more power that they couldn’t use on the road in any case. After all, the 3.2L VR6 didn’t boost sales
back in 2003. A facelift in 2018 didn’t improve things. In 2019 Audi announced there wouldn’t be
another TT. The car bowed out with a series of “goodbye”
special editions and by November 2023 the last car rolled off the Hungarian production line. Maybe the stylists of the second and third
generation car were stuck between a rock and a hard place? On one hand they had a popular car with a
unique style. Making something completely different would
surely alienate existing customers? And didn’t Porsche keep reinterpreting their
911 for a new generation, and that car kept selling and selling and selling. So, don’t rock the boat – make something
that looks like a new TT, but make it a bit bigger because that’s what customers want. The original TT was an amazing, unique shape,
and new hit ideas don’t exactly grow on trees – stylists after all are just human
beings at the end of the day. The TT was a rarity for Audi – a design
leap into the unknown. Something new and different that could excite
or repulse. Peter Schreyer, head of Audi Design said of
the original car “The TT is the absolute opposite of what is commonly referred to as
a car designed by a committee”. I’m not sure you could say the same thing
about the second or third generation car. As I mentioned, the first TT sketches were
shown to Audi management two months after the Renault Argos appeared, although I don’t
know if Freeman Thomas used it as a direct reference. However, a car that came from the same Renault
design studio, the Twingo had almost the same story as the TT. It was a design that split opinion with some
hating it, but many loving it, and it also went through three generations with the second
and third generation losing the “absolute” styling of the original. Audi’s now focused on electrifying its range,
but the TT was never about the powertrain. The base model was fast enough, but it wasn’t
amazingly quick. That wasn’t the point – it was about the
style and attention to detail. If Audi wants to energise its range, it needs
to use more than electrons, it needs a shot of design that will excite like the original Audi TT. If you want to know more about the Twingo,
there’s the video on the right. Also, Mazda made their own sports car in the
1970s – the RX-7 and they were the only company that made the Wankel rotary engine
work. It made for a unique experience and there’s
a link as well if you’re interested. Thanks for watching and I’ll see you in
the next video!
