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Reported by Nathan Millward It may not be the easiest pill to swallow, but there’s no escaping old age. Survival of the fittest is what it’s all about, and when the savage hands of time finally tap us on the shoulder, there’s no option but to bow out and retire with grace. You try telling that to the new Audi TT Quattro Sport.
With images of the next generation TT doing the rounds, the release of this stripped out, power hiked variant could mark the final tear jerking farewell to the original style icon. And boy does it intend to go out with a bang.
Don’t let the cosmetically tweaked exterior fool you, drive the car in anger and its apparent granddad’s been on the Viagra. Powered by the same 1.8-litre turbo engine found throughout much of the TT range, the veteran now offers a meaty 237bhp at full chat and will surge to 60mph in an impressive 5.9 seconds. Compare that to the 6.3 seconds of its 3.2-litre V6 sibling and it’s clear that with the Quattro Sport, Audi has saved the best for last.
And what a good job they have. When the TT was launched in 1999 it created and captured a market in one single master stroke. Six years on and the TT faces much stiffer competition. Hooligans terrorise in their 350Zs, pragmatists squeeze their 2.4 children in to the RX-8, and metro-sexual man cruises Bond Street in his Crossfire. I’m not going to labour on the car’s appearance, judge for yourself. A show of hands in the office did however confirm the Quattro Sport’s Marmite appeal. Whatever your opinion, it certainly raises eyebrows. We’re used to commenting on the use of slats, grooves, accentuations and angulations to describe the latest efforts of the car designer, but with the Quattro Sport it’s all done through the binary of colours. Lurid to some, the contrasting red and black of our test car certainly drew the glances expected, and perhaps demanded, by any future owner. Inconspicuous performance is not what this car is about.
Continuing the sporting theme, the car also adopts the same S-Line styling package as its 3.2-litre sibling, with black wing mirrors and spoiler tip further distinguishing this Special Edition from its lesser brethren. A set of 18-inch polished alloys complete the look, but rest assured, there’s definitely no mistaking this £29,250 Quattro Sport with the rest of the range.
With the visual fireworks exploding on the exterior, Audi never were going to let the TT’s contemporary interior go untouched. The cockpit has always been a place of delight and intrigue, but with the Quattro Sport, the karma of the standard TT has been shattered by a set of deeply bolstered leather and alcantara Recaro front seats. Getting in and out may require the skills of a contortionist, but once in place, the vice like grip laughs in the face of lateral movement, and in many ways offer a greater sense of speed and urgency than any mechanical mastery going on in the engine bay. To get a finance quote for an Audi TT Quattro Sport from over 400 lenders click here
