Audi TT Coupé 3.2 quattro review
by David Finlay (1 April 2004)
The Audi TT seems to inspire a wide range of emotions. I know people who would acid-dip their grandmothers to get behind the wheel of one for an afternoon, and I know others who have absolutely no idea what the appeal is. Fortunately for Audi, the TT's popularity is sufficiently wide for the car to be quite a common sight on the roads these days.
Thoroughly German in almost every respect, the TT nevertheless has a couple of UK connections. For one thing (and this is something we don't hear much about) it's named after a British race - the Tourist Trophy, which began in 1905 and has been held in Northern Ireland and the Isle of Man as well as on the mainland.
The Audi has also been an inspiration to one of the most proudly British of car manufacturers. Aston Martin considers the TT to be its benchmark in terms not of performance or of styling but of build quality. In other words, a maker of low-volume luxury cars considers the job well done if it can match the construction levels of something which is based on the platform of a Volkswagen Golf.
You can see the point. The TT is beautifully built. Whether or not it is also beautifully designed depends on your personal prejudices. I've heard it said that from the outside the TT looks like a Beetle with the horizontal hold badly adjusted.
On the other hand, I have never heard a whisper of complaint about the interior styling. Interior room, certainly - tall drivers have to bend down a long way to get in without bashing their heads against the roof, and there is so little legroom in the back that the rear seats seem like a waste of leather. But I doubt that any TT buyer ever had the slightest intention of carrying more than one passenger.
The car tested here is the 3.2 Coupé (as opposed to the slightly more expensive open-topped Roadster) with DSG transmission. The number hints at the presence of the V6 engine also found in such diverse machinery as Volkswagen's Touareg off-roader, Phaeton luxury saloon and Golf R32 hot hatch. We'll come back to that later.
DSG is the really high-tech bit. It stands for Direct Shift Gearbox, this being an exceptionally cunning piece of kit which selects not only which of the gears you want now but also the one it thinks you will need next. Loud crunching noises are averted by the fact that two clutches are involved, only one of which is engaged at any given moment. The swapping of clutches is what gives the driver the impression of gears being changed, and the process - unlike that of other electronically-controlled manual transmissions - is both quick and smooth; only BMW's SMG system is in the same league in that respect.
It's a very complicated system but at the same time very easy to use. In fact, from the driver's point of view, it's almost exactly the same as using an automatic with manual over-ride. You can switch ratios using the gearlever or a pair of paddles on the steering wheel, or you can just let the car do the work for you. Downward changes under braking are slightly slower than they would be in an automatic of this description, but they're quicker than on a normal manual (unless you have the fastest-moving left leg in human history).
Doubters might at this point wonder what happens if the gearbox decides your next change will be up when you really want it to go down. Dear Anxious: there is a slight extra delay while the gears sort themselves out, but you have to be paying very close attention to spot this. I never found any situation in which it caused a problem.
The most high-tech transmission in the range is matched to the most powerful engine. The 3.2-litre unit produces just shy of 250bhp and does so in a splendidly refined manner, providing lots of mid-range urge and producing a smooth but evocative sound. It's a very impressive unit indeed.
Unfortunately, it also ruins the car. The problem is exactly the same as we found with the Golf R32, and if you disagreed with the opinions expressed in our road test of that car (as several people did) you might want to stop reading now, because you're not going to enjoy this next bit at all.
Such a large, heavy engine can only be fitted to the Golf platform if you hang the whole thing ahead of the front wheels. In terms of ride and handling, this is a complete disaster. Every time you encounter a bump or a dip you can feel the engine hauling down on the front suspension, a factor which entirely dominates the ride quality. And although the weight distribution is ideal for any object which is intended to travel only in straight lines (a dart, for example), it's little short of calamitous if you want to change direction.
Every slightest turn of the steering wheel results in messages that the front end doesn't want to turn in. You can force it to do this because the TT has a lot of grip, and I should add at this point that in well over 1000 miles I never experienced the slightest hint of understeer. But you really have to persuade the nose to start moving into a bend. It's very easy to compensate for this subconsciously by turning in too early, thereby taking entirely the wrong line and making the rest of the corner a struggle rather than the delightful experience it should be in a driver's car.
Because of the grip, and indeed the power, this TT is very quick. It's also a comfortable cruiser if the roads are straight and smooth. But I never truly enjoyed driving it along interesting roads, and I can't help thinking that in that respect the TT 3.2 DSG misses the point.
Second opinion: Well, I think you can enjoy this car while driving fairly briskly but without pushing it really hard on corners, although I agree that that is not exactly ringing acclamation for a low-slung four-wheel drive coupé with this amount of power. Top-class grip and traction do count for a lot, though. The TT is indeed very well-built, it looks terrific, and on this occasion I never once bumped my head against the roof on the way in or out. I've also got used to the interior, which isn't as claustrophobic as early impressions suggest, largely because the very shallow door windows are continued well to the rear thanks to the additional glass alongside the almost totally "virtual" rear seats. This also makes it easy to see out to the left at awkwardly angled T-junctions. The DSG box works beautifully, and it's handy to have a fully automatic mode as well. The very low-profile tyres certainly don't help the ride quality on any but billiard-table surfaces. I'd like to try a car of this kind with much less extreme tyres, but marketing departments rarely give them the nod. Ross Finlay.
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