German Car Zone

Like the smell summer's first cut grass, a sound can bring you back to an exact point in history with a jolt so startling it staunches the breath in your lungs. Turn the key, blip the throttle, get rolling, find second then third gear. Squeeze a bit of throttle and wake up the boost. Surf up through the two thousands, then the threes, on around the dial to the red-line. I'm back in one of the first properly quick cars I ever drove, the magical 1989 Audi Quattro 20V.

The engine in the new TT RS has nothing material to do with that old warhorse. There are no parts in common, only the layout – five cylinders, four valves per cylinder and a huge turbo. The old engine had 220 hp, the new one 340. This one is mounted transversely instead of longitudinally, and the aluminum-bodied TT body is night-and-day different from the galvanized-steel Quattro.



But those Audi RS engineers must be just as sentimental as I am. They thought it worth spending hundreds of hours of development time working on the intake and exhaust to make sure the TT RS sounds spookily like the 20V Quattro. It's a deep subversively jazz-funk rhythm at low revs, solidifying and harmonizing and polishing itself smooth as it picks up speed and voice. Lift the throttle and there's a wry little chuckle from the wastegate; get back on the pedal and it doesn't waste an instant in getting back the groove.

Blimey, hasn't the TT come a long way? About half as far back along the conveyor belt of memory as the 1989 20V Quattro is the original 1998 tt. Its shape altered everything, but its MkIV Golf suspension meant wasn't the sports car Audi wanted us to believe. I liked it well enough, but couldn't ignore the nagging truth: It was style over substance. That was then, this is now. Here's a TT that might just be fit to stand alongside the ur-Quattro – an eighties hero with an iron will and nerves of steel, a car that was definitely substance over style.

The TT RS definitely has the raw material. The MkII TT is a vastly better car than the original, thanks to a lighter body, better weight distribution and more sophisticated suspension. Now imagine the possibilities of Audi's RS squad getting to work on it. The people who gave us the RS4 and RS8.



Using a five-cylinder wasn't merely the choice of a bunch of sentimentalists. There are sound engineering reasons. The 90-degree V6 supercharged engine from the S4 wouldn't fit. The narrow-angle V6 out of the TT 3.2 could have been turbo'd, but the resulting lump would have been too heavy. A compact 2.5-liter five just seemed right. And given the colossal number of engines in the VW/Audi Group, a little creative cut'n'paste found the RS guys what they wanted. They took the block from the US-market five-cylinder Jetta, modified it to within an inch of its life, then dressed it up with a modified version of the cylinder head and turbo from the RS6's horizon- munching V10 (which of course has two of each).

Torque spews out like floodwater: the whole nine yards can be had from well below 2,000 rpm to well beyond 5,000. It's so strong it'd reduce a DSG gearbox to tears. A six-speed manual is all you're allowed, and its shift is a little on the notchy side.

The TT RS's gears are stacked meaningfully tight and the Autobahn's showing us a brief window in the traffic. Brief but, in a car like this, worth a punt. We're at 100-ish mph, so fourth's the gear to get us accelerating. There's pretty serious shove here, as you might imagine from a fairly light, fairly low- drag little 340 hp grenade of a car. fourth gear winds itself out to the 6,800rpm redline in very short order. finally, fifth gets its moment of glory. We sail up to 150-plus. The car's alive to the steering but cool-hand stable.



Normally that'd be game over. You'd hit the 155 mph speed limiter, slip into sixth and keep your mind focused on a point half-a-mile down the road, analysing every potential series of events that might lead to someone moving out into your lane at a speed nearly 100mph slower than yours. (Also bearing in mind that to slow from 100 mph to 55 demands your brakes dissipate 2.1 times as much kinetic energy as it takes to go from 100 to zero.)

But today it's not like that. You have to aim your eagle gaze even further ahead, because this particular TT RS has a delete-option box ticked. The one that nullifies the 155 mph limiter. Instead i saw the speedo up to 175. It got there without wasting a moment, and once there it still felt like it was born to it.



Every RS Audi has had something pretty plum for motorization. From the 315 hp five-cylinder in the original Porsche-assembled RS2 through a twin-turbo V6, a twin-turbo V8, a twin- turbo V10, and the recently deceased RS4's crazy rev-happy V8, there's not a duffer among the lot of them. But the record on handling has been a little more mixed. Some of RS's cars (R8, RS4) are sensational in bends, others have been technically faultless but as one-dimensional as a length of cord.

The RS squares up to any corner without flinching. You never have to nanny it over bumps or hold its hand if the surface changes. Audi says it can throw most of the torque to the back wheels, but however much you flap at the throttle you can never make it feel as rear-endy you can with an R8. Nor is it as delicate and talkative as a Cayman, or as playful as a 370Z. But it certainly isn't inert or terminally undeersteery, especially not if you back off a little then give it all the beans. And you can invest huge trust in it, which is a very nice quality in a 340 hp sports car on a greasy day.

The RS is Cayman S money, and a 370Z has nearly the same power for about $18k less. Still, AWD is an asset, and like any Audi it's beautifully turned out. Special RS dress-up in the cabin includes areas of leather perforated with a repeating tessellated TT, the perforations revealing light fabric beneath. The semi-race seats are plain wonderful.



There's also a show-off rear spoiler, but you can have the normal TT's disappearing item. And guess what, that's just as aerodynamically effective as the fixed wing. Although now that I come to think of it the original Quattro had a big old plank bolted to its trunk-lid too. I guess there's nothing wrong with a bit of nostalgia. All we need now is a tape deck for the Stone Roses album.

Forbiden Fruit: Audi TT RS - Top Gear US

Those seats are superb!
Thank god you get the org. TT spoiler just paint it black or make it Carbon

+1. Audi's are supposed to be understated, even the RS models. That spoiler is just wrong.

The upper part is removeble, it's a matter of time that we will see tuners putting on different shaped top parts.

Any photos?

I would make it look panamera like cause personally I like those fishtail
rearspoilers but not too big and it must be hidden when not operation
(at least on a TT) Lambo, Ferrari ++ it can big big and scary!


In fact still the Murcielago spoiler gives a lower topspeed with
5 or som km/t less