Audi TTS. Couldn’t quite stretch to the R8 this year but I do feel I am getting closer to it and eventually the elusive Bugatti. Took a few months deciding on the car I wanted and considered a wide range of different cars (a lot from the Volkswagen Group) before taking a brave pill and getting the TT.
I appreciate it has the same appeal of the Mini (ie every other car is a TT), but in this latest incarnation i.e. the ‘S’ version it is a little rarer and a different beast to the standard model. My main aim was to go for a big engine as I had never owned anything larger than a four cylinder but after the sales man did his bit (and sales people are the easiest people to sell to!) I could see the benefit of choosing the smaller engine. This motor is the latest upgrade from the infamous Golf GTI and offers 272 PS while still delivering nearly 36 mpg and a 0-62 time of 5.2 seconds. Another benefit of this car was the Quattro four-wheel drive giving me the confidence to journey back home on the weekend during a snow storm – something I didn’t enjoy doing in the Mazda.
My most controversial decision however was to choose the S-Tronic gearbox instead of being a proper petrol head and opting for the manual. I had read up a lot on this subject and ordered it without even trying it but the fact that even Jeremy Clarkson liked it meant I had to be onto a good thing. Nothing however prepared me for the brilliance of this gearbox and now I wonder how I ever managed to drive a car before. This is not an auto but actually a dual clutch unit which Audi pioneered with the first version of the TT. It blips the throttle and downshifts automatically during braking while delivering seamless shifts between gears. As I say a superb piece of engineering and one I would definitely recommend to anyone looking to by a car from the Volkswagen group. However other manufacturers are fast catching up and I predict this will become the standard gearbox once the novelty has worn off.
Leave a Reply