"That's a lovely car you've got there," said the man at the adjacent petrol pump. I mumbled shyly that it wasn't mine. "Still a lovely car, though," he said.
And there you have the reason why the third-generation Audi TT will probably be every bit as successful as the two that went before it. People like Audis, and they especially like TTs, and if circumstances and finances allow they will buy one, and they'll be pleased they did so. It's a nice thing to have and to be seen to have.
I caught myself smiling almost every time I approached the test car, even though I knew I wasn't going to enjoy driving it. The suspension set-up is so obviously wrong that I'm at a loss to suggest why Audi chose it, unless someone within the company has a bet with someone else that the car will still find many customers no matter what the driving experience is like.
Why is the front end so floppy and bouncy? It makes enthusiastic cornering much more difficult than it needs to be, and the ride is compromised even on a less than ideally surfaced motorway. Fixing this would be easy - how come it didn't happen during the prototype stages?
The optional 20-inch wheels on the test car - S lines normally run on 19-inch wheels - didn't help either. A further complication is that the TT has a lot of road noise, especially on rougher surfaces, which just makes the driving it even more unpleasant.
There are plus points. The motor industry seems to have decided very suddenly that neat, uncluttered interiors are the way forward, and Audi has done a fine job here of creating one of those. At first sight there appear to be very few minor controls, but they're all there. The ones for the air-conditioning and the seat heaters are now mounted in the air vents, which seems an odd arrangement to begin with but soon turns out to be a very effective one.
All the information the driver requires, including a particularly pretty satellite navigation display, is dead ahead on the excellent digital instrument panel. The only problem with this is that a passenger would find it difficult to change the radio from one station to another. The control allowing them to do so is mounted conveniently in the centre console, but the display showing them which channel they're trying to select is a long way off.
There's a lot of room up front, and the sports seats of the test car were magnificently supportive. There are rear seats too, but they're about as relevant as antlers on a bat. I can't imagine anyone over the age of eighteen months being able to use them when there's a large adult sitting directly ahead.
The back window is enormous, and other manufacturers could learn from Audi about how to provide good rear visibility in a coupe-shaped car. Audi might in turn like to consider providing the window with its own wiper. This is almost universal on hatchbacks, which, despite appearances, is what the TT really is.
Accordingly, it's quite practical. There's enough room for 305 litres of luggage when the useless rear seats are in place. Fold them down and the volume increases to 712 litres, though if you do that you can't have the front seats as far back as you could otherwise.
The 2.0 TFSI has a 227bhp turbo petrol engine which provides plenty of acceleration - 0-62mph takes just 5.9 seconds. (If you want more, the still more powerful TTS will be along shortly.) The poor noise insulation means that it can be quite loud when you're pushing on, but more enthusiastic types may see that as an advantage.
Official combined fuel economy is 44.8mpg, but you'd do well to get close to that. On a long motorway run, much of it admittedly in bad weather, I averaged 35.3mpg. Another tankful saw me through 320 miles or so on motorways, in town and on some enthusiastically taken country roads, which brought the figure down to 32.5mpg. If you spent a holiday buzzing through the Alps you'd be lucky to reach 30.
The diesel "ultra" model would be much more economical, and it's slightly cheaper to buy. I think I'd go for that one, but I'd want Audi to work on the suspension and the noise insulation before I considered a TT at all, regardless of how popular it might make me in service stations.
