My week with a TT convertible
Discussion
Had a TT convertible as a loan-car for 10 days and 500 miles, thought I'd share my experience:-
Short version: It’s a fashion-accessory that can cover ground very quickly.
Long version:
Exterior – familiar, almost bland. It’s apparently a design icon, but to be honest, especially in metallic grey, it looks quite forgettable. Convertible has definitely ‘lost’ something vs the hard-top, and even top-down it’s not the most attractive car in class. But that’s all subjective, and some people will prefer it…it’s a very clean and un-fussy design.
PS - saw a 3.2 in dark blue yesterday with nice multispokes, and it looked substantially better. I guess the TT is very colour-dependent.
Interior – what’s all the fuss about Audi materials? Plastics are, well, very plastic. Not much better than my Focus, quite honestly. Design and layout good, however – nice use of chrome-effect, clear dials, decent ergonomics – Audi interior design does (mostly) live up to it’s rep. Reasonably spacious cabin, with plenty of elbow room. Sufficient if not generous interior cubby-space, and reasonably well laid out too, although the rear-centre storage bin is a very odd shape – small aperture, wider at back. Nets for door-pockets seem a cheap touch, although they are large enough to be useful.
Driving position – pretty good seats, nicely upholstered in full leather. Need more adjustment (lumbar support would have been good), but felt broad enough and well padded, although not perfectly comfy. Pedals nicely spaced, and well weighted (I was pleasantly surprised by this), but too far forward and with too-long clutch travel - my right leg had no support from the seat in the best driving position, which puts strain on the knee. Steering wheel also well-positioned. Sat higher than expected, yet visibility front and rear is poor…you have NO idea where the 4 corners of the car were, making placing the car on the road and especially parking it more difficult. Stylish design is all very well, but the TT clearly displays form-over-function here.
ICE – speakers are very good as standard (better than the Japanese competition) - clarity of sound was still retained at 80mph with the hood down. This is in a base-spec car with a cassette player (Poor show Audi!!!), and no steering wheel/column/dashboard controls.
Right, the important stuff…
Starting up – turning a key feels rather mundane after the S2000. That said, the engine fires up cleanly if rather clunkily, and settles down to a bassy but very anodyne 4-pot drone. Clearly no-one at VAG thought about the aural character of the car…it has none!
Pulling away – clutch natural and smooth, accelerator progressive, steering meaty and weighty but very numb - my S2000 is feelsome by comparison, and the Focus a paragon of communication. But it is a very easy car to drive, and feels tight and precise from the off.
Performance – despite having 180bhp and a turbo, the car feels very hamstrung by the 4wd and the stiffening of the soft-top - 1,550kg is a lot to lug around, and it shows. A little turbo-lag is present if you decide you want power straight away, but it isn’t debilitating, and once it has a head-of-steam it pulls cleanly and relatively powerfully. Gearing surprisingly short, probably to disguise the weight and 4wd losses. Subjectively, probably marginally quicker than a Fiesta ST, but mainly in higher gears. This would be an easy car to drive on a motorway. Surprisingly, despite the 4wd, launching the car quickly from a standing start is difficult…the classic 4wd ‘4,000rpm and dump the clutch’ just results in a jolting clutch-bite and THEN it pulls-away from about 2,500rpm. Granny-slipping the clutch isn’t much better. In all honesty, it feels like a FWD car with excellent traction.
Handling – Lot of grip. Stiff suspension, wide track, and wide P-zero’s meant the car has a lot of mechanical grip. Quick direction changes reveal a very nose-heavy attitude to the car, and trigger the ESP even in the dry, further retarding progress. Steering response is crisp and direct, however, with good turn-in and good adjustment below-the-limit. Stiff, limited-travel suspension does however mean that on a fun B-road the suspension bottoms out, upsetting the composure and forcing you to back off where a true hot-hatch would be soaking it up. Dynamically the car feels very 1-dimensional, even with ESP off – I have never driven a car so averse to oversteer, and in the dry you cannot provoke any oversteer regardless of how brutal you are with the controls. With ESP on, trying to accelerate through a roundabout just triggers the ESP and slows you down, making it a more frustrating drive than a diesel Focus.
Ride – poor primary ride caused by overly-stiff springs and badly matched dampers – on the UK’s potholed and badly-repaired roads this is a car where you need to watch the road ahead carefully. Secondary ride better, surprisingly. My car (hire car) had a major tracking issue and wanted to pull left as soon as you released the steering wheel. In summary, this is a smooth-tarmac car, where the stiff short-travel suspension and prodigious grip are boons not liabilities
Economy – on a very varied mix of roads and top-up and –down, I averaged c.24-25mpg over 500+ miles. For a car with only average performance, I found this quite appalling – that sort of economy would be excusable in a rocket-ship, but not in something that is outgunned by cars half the price.
Verdict:
This is clearly the epitomy of form over function. That said, it is well built, well-designed inside and out, and a competent car to drive, with a lot of grip and a reasonably powerful engine.
What it is, though, is boring. This is a car which will teach the owner nothing about driving, and tell the owner virtually nothing about what the car is doing underneath them. It is also a car that will almost never bite the driver, unless the driver is really foolish. But the lack of information and learning could almost encourage such foolishness, as it feels foolproof right up to the point it lets go.
I would never own one. I would also recommend a good modern hot-hatch for anyone who wants a reasonably fast yet ‘safe’ car, and I would recommend the likes of the 206CC to anyone who wants a stylish convertible. Which leaves it’s market as those people who value badge and image above all else…and in the UK that is clearly a huge market.
Short version: It’s a fashion-accessory that can cover ground very quickly.
Long version:
Exterior – familiar, almost bland. It’s apparently a design icon, but to be honest, especially in metallic grey, it looks quite forgettable. Convertible has definitely ‘lost’ something vs the hard-top, and even top-down it’s not the most attractive car in class. But that’s all subjective, and some people will prefer it…it’s a very clean and un-fussy design.
PS - saw a 3.2 in dark blue yesterday with nice multispokes, and it looked substantially better. I guess the TT is very colour-dependent.
Interior – what’s all the fuss about Audi materials? Plastics are, well, very plastic. Not much better than my Focus, quite honestly. Design and layout good, however – nice use of chrome-effect, clear dials, decent ergonomics – Audi interior design does (mostly) live up to it’s rep. Reasonably spacious cabin, with plenty of elbow room. Sufficient if not generous interior cubby-space, and reasonably well laid out too, although the rear-centre storage bin is a very odd shape – small aperture, wider at back. Nets for door-pockets seem a cheap touch, although they are large enough to be useful.
Driving position – pretty good seats, nicely upholstered in full leather. Need more adjustment (lumbar support would have been good), but felt broad enough and well padded, although not perfectly comfy. Pedals nicely spaced, and well weighted (I was pleasantly surprised by this), but too far forward and with too-long clutch travel - my right leg had no support from the seat in the best driving position, which puts strain on the knee. Steering wheel also well-positioned. Sat higher than expected, yet visibility front and rear is poor…you have NO idea where the 4 corners of the car were, making placing the car on the road and especially parking it more difficult. Stylish design is all very well, but the TT clearly displays form-over-function here.
ICE – speakers are very good as standard (better than the Japanese competition) - clarity of sound was still retained at 80mph with the hood down. This is in a base-spec car with a cassette player (Poor show Audi!!!), and no steering wheel/column/dashboard controls.
Right, the important stuff…
Starting up – turning a key feels rather mundane after the S2000. That said, the engine fires up cleanly if rather clunkily, and settles down to a bassy but very anodyne 4-pot drone. Clearly no-one at VAG thought about the aural character of the car…it has none!
Pulling away – clutch natural and smooth, accelerator progressive, steering meaty and weighty but very numb - my S2000 is feelsome by comparison, and the Focus a paragon of communication. But it is a very easy car to drive, and feels tight and precise from the off.
Performance – despite having 180bhp and a turbo, the car feels very hamstrung by the 4wd and the stiffening of the soft-top - 1,550kg is a lot to lug around, and it shows. A little turbo-lag is present if you decide you want power straight away, but it isn’t debilitating, and once it has a head-of-steam it pulls cleanly and relatively powerfully. Gearing surprisingly short, probably to disguise the weight and 4wd losses. Subjectively, probably marginally quicker than a Fiesta ST, but mainly in higher gears. This would be an easy car to drive on a motorway. Surprisingly, despite the 4wd, launching the car quickly from a standing start is difficult…the classic 4wd ‘4,000rpm and dump the clutch’ just results in a jolting clutch-bite and THEN it pulls-away from about 2,500rpm. Granny-slipping the clutch isn’t much better. In all honesty, it feels like a FWD car with excellent traction.
Handling – Lot of grip. Stiff suspension, wide track, and wide P-zero’s meant the car has a lot of mechanical grip. Quick direction changes reveal a very nose-heavy attitude to the car, and trigger the ESP even in the dry, further retarding progress. Steering response is crisp and direct, however, with good turn-in and good adjustment below-the-limit. Stiff, limited-travel suspension does however mean that on a fun B-road the suspension bottoms out, upsetting the composure and forcing you to back off where a true hot-hatch would be soaking it up. Dynamically the car feels very 1-dimensional, even with ESP off – I have never driven a car so averse to oversteer, and in the dry you cannot provoke any oversteer regardless of how brutal you are with the controls. With ESP on, trying to accelerate through a roundabout just triggers the ESP and slows you down, making it a more frustrating drive than a diesel Focus.
Ride – poor primary ride caused by overly-stiff springs and badly matched dampers – on the UK’s potholed and badly-repaired roads this is a car where you need to watch the road ahead carefully. Secondary ride better, surprisingly. My car (hire car) had a major tracking issue and wanted to pull left as soon as you released the steering wheel. In summary, this is a smooth-tarmac car, where the stiff short-travel suspension and prodigious grip are boons not liabilities
Economy – on a very varied mix of roads and top-up and –down, I averaged c.24-25mpg over 500+ miles. For a car with only average performance, I found this quite appalling – that sort of economy would be excusable in a rocket-ship, but not in something that is outgunned by cars half the price.
Verdict:
This is clearly the epitomy of form over function. That said, it is well built, well-designed inside and out, and a competent car to drive, with a lot of grip and a reasonably powerful engine.
What it is, though, is boring. This is a car which will teach the owner nothing about driving, and tell the owner virtually nothing about what the car is doing underneath them. It is also a car that will almost never bite the driver, unless the driver is really foolish. But the lack of information and learning could almost encourage such foolishness, as it feels foolproof right up to the point it lets go.
I would never own one. I would also recommend a good modern hot-hatch for anyone who wants a reasonably fast yet ‘safe’ car, and I would recommend the likes of the 206CC to anyone who wants a stylish convertible. Which leaves it’s market as those people who value badge and image above all else…and in the UK that is clearly a huge market.
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