“With the TT, Audi created one of the automotive design icons of the last 20 years,” said Ulrich Hackenberg, an Audi board member, in introducing the car Thursday.
With the Sportback concept, he added, Audi was fusing the basic TT look with the profile and utility of larger Audi vehicles like the popular A7 and A5 Sportbacks. (There is also an A3 Sportback, but it since it came out looking like a station wagon, nobody mentioned that relationship in this context.)
The TT Sportback is powered by a 2-liter turbocharged 4-cylinder gasoline engine that sends up to 400 horsepower and 332 pound feet of torque through a seven-speed S-tronic gearbox to all four wheels of a quattro system. Audi said it was capable of 3.9-second sprints from zero to 62 m.p.h.
Like the TT coupe, the Sportback does have seats for four occupants, but the rear positions seem best suited to people with no legs. (The back seats are really there for lower insurance premiums, as two-seat sports cars price out much higher.) Even though the Sportback is a good foot longer than the coupe, very little of that extra space seems to have been devoted to additional rear passenger legroom. And let’s not even open a discussion about rear passenger headroom, what with the car’s steeply slanted roofline.
From an exterior perspective, stretching the TT into a sedan — or more correctly a five-door hatchback — and making it look like such a natural, well-integrated design was tough assignment for Audi’s design team. But the Sportback delivers.
No decision has been made whether to put the TT Sportback into production at all, let alone distribute it in North America, the company said. The base TT itself is a niche model in Audi’s lineup and sales are limited. But the automaker says it is looking into expanding the TT line into a whole family of vehicles, including roadsters (also shown in Paris), a wagon, a small sport utility vehicle and other models. Competitively, the potential TT family might stand up well against the Mercedes-Benz CLA, as well as similar models from BMW.
