A report citing uncredited sources at Audi has brought the four-door TT back into the public imagination. The report claims that Audi will replace the two-door TT that we all know and love completely with a door-door model.
The four-door TT will be based on the TT Sportback concept first shown at the Paris Motor Salon in 2014, according to Auto Express. The project was allegedly scuppered by Dieselgate, but is being brought back due to waning interest in small cars and coupes.
“If you set falling demand against rising costs, it’s obvious Audi cannot sustain its present course in the medium term,” an unnamed source told Auto Express. “Instead, there has been intensive consideration of the coupe and the convertible in the compact segment.”
Auto Express also reports that the four-door TT will be offered with a range of electrified drivetrains, along with conventional gas-powered options—a project which the car’s expanded footprint may help to facilitate. The TT Sportback concept was roughly 11 inches longer and 2.3 inches wider than the current TT.
All of which would make it just a bit smaller than the A5 Sportback. Although the rumor is based on a real concept, lending it some credence, the evidence suggesting the market is yearning for a smaller A5 Sportback is hard to find.
Sedans, famously, are selling very poorly right now, and while Audi has managed to find a niche with the A7 and the A5 Sportback, it remains difficult to see how much more profit or how many more sales the brand could find by simply adding doors to the TT.
Regardless, if we take these rumors seriously, and if we accept that the TT is being replaced by a low-slung sedan, the best conclusion we here at Fourtitude can draw is that this would be bitter-sweet. We’d be enormously saddened to see the TT RS, a supercar barely disguised as a small sports car, go, but a low slung sedan would be nice to see–a nice change of pace from the menagerie of “sporty” crossovers that has been trotted out of late.
This would also mark a slight change in Audi policy. Whereas they spent the early part of the decade pumping models into every niche, the four-door coming at the expense of the two-door would indicate that Audi is less eager to populate its range with every conceivable variant.
We’ll keep our eyes peeled and our ears to the ground for more on this rumor in the future.
[source: Auto Express]
The post Decoupage: Audi Set to Add a Pair of Doors to the TT, Report Claims appeared first on VWVortex.
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