Don't call it a TT: up close with Audi's pretty two-door coming your way in 2027

Did you notice Audi gave up on two doors? The TT wasn’t replaced, we still mourn the R8 and the A5 badge is on the new A4. Even the Germans are struggling to explain their logic there. 

Into this sportiness vacuum, Audi’s new design team has poured a pretty coupe cabrio called the Concept C. Ignore that name, they didn’t have to time to come up with one, but despite our protestations it won’t be called TT – too big, too expensive to carry the badge, says Audi CEO, Gernot Döllner. Boo, hiss.

Audi says this is 95 per cent the real deal, though. On sale in 2027, riding on the ‘delayed more than HS2’ platform originally reserved for the electric Porsche Boxster. It’s also a manifesto pledge for how Audis will look from now on.

Photography: Mark Riccioni

Gaping grilles, meaningless creases, fake exhausts, characterless light bars and maybe even ‘death by touchscreen’ interiors are out. Smooth, restrained bodywork and cockpits rich in tactile switchgear are back, aiming to restore Audi’s reputation for class-leading cabins soundtracked by crisp button clicks.

Right, let’s not get carried away – 10 years ago Audi whipped the covers off four production-ready TT concept cars. A lightweight track-bred tearaway, a svelte four-door saloon, a shooting brake wagon and the inevitable mutated crossover. Before that, it teased us with a revived 700bhp Quattro. Not one made it to showrooms.

We’ve been edged by Audi before, only to see dreams of four-ringed sportiness rolled up into a ball and splurged into yet another tedious SUV. But the Concept C offers hope because it can succeed where even Porsche has stumbled.

Side note: back in 2023 Porsche announced replacements for the Boxster/Cayman twins would be electric. Suddenly the controversy of swapping flat sixes for turbocharged flat flours looked as anarchic as a church knitting circle. To preserve a mid-engined ‘feel’, batteries would be heaped up behind the seats instead of slung underneath.

Couple of problems. One is that Porsche (along with Goldman Sachs, which always gets its big investments spot on) ploughed cash into a Swedish battery startup called Northvolt to make these new cells. Then Northvolt went south, declaring bankruptcy and torching $5.8 billion in the process. The Boxster and Cayman have been deleted from order books because they fall foul of new EU cybersecurity rules, with no replacement until 2027 at the earliest.

Even when batteries do come on stream, do Porsche buyers want one? Taycan depreciation, cratering profit margins and flip-flopping government support has Porsche applying the brakes to its headlong EV dash, while word on the Nürburgring Straße is its engineers simply aren’t happy with the handling and range results they’re getting from their electric sportster.

That could be the opportunity Audi needs. It can launch the platform instead, while Porsche reconsiders. Unlike Porsche, Audi needs a sporty flagship. Something to park in the F1 paddock next year. Unlike Porsche, no one expects an Audi – whatever badge they choose – to offer a sparkling drive. Audis major on design and that brushed aluminium sheen of techy German solidity. Lob two motors in: quattro AWD is baked into the Audi mantra. Thirty years ago, the MkI TT was almost badged as a sub-Boxster Porsche before company politics upended the applecart. Irony, eh?

The small, well planted Concept C has flashes of the TT’s perfectly balanced simplicity that made it the queen of 1990s urban chic. The 3D-extruded ‘Avus’ six spoke wheels will have Audi geeks in a nostalgic lather. But in those lines that taper off the sharp tail and head down the haunches, there are also glimpses of the original R8. The slatted rear deck pays homage to R8 LMS endurance racers and Will Smith’s RSQ runabout from 2004 future noir I, Robot.

As for a new R8, based on the Lamborghini Temerario’s hybrid V8 twin turbo platform – don’t rule it out yet. “Of course there’s room for another car, but we need to go step by step,” says Döllner.

Audi doesn’t make any claims about range, performance, weight or price, but will spill lots of tea on the looks. The vertical ‘grille’ motif up front is inspired by the 1936 Auto Union Type C racer and the 2006 Audi A6’s Singleframe mesh. Here it’s just a window the front-facing radar can hide behind.

Combine that smoked pillar with the quad-element headlights and there are hints of Bugatti Chiron to the face. Audi’s design team blushes and insists it chose ‘quattro’ LEDs because Audi is synonymous with the number four. Four rings, 4WD, 4mm off your back bumper.

Speaking of, it’s minimalist at the rear. No fake mesh or cosplay exhausts like all those recent RS3s and Q5s. Phew. Quad element red LEDs mirror the face, while the absent back window is apparently to “save weight”. A concept car flourish, we hope. But there’s only one rearview camera, so fingers crossed Audi’s seen sense and binned its idiotic Virtual Mirrors for good.

Walking round the Concept C with designer Francesco d’Amore, I asked point blank if Audi has been stung by criticism of late – that the cars looked needlessly aggressive, overwrought and had lost the matinee idol correctness of the early 2000s. He insisted his team don’t “read the comments” (always a good call) and this is simply a new direction. And given his new boss is Massimo Frascella, recently of JLR, it’s hardly shocking to see Audi veer off in the direction of reductive, ultra simple design.

But the interior? That simply has to be a response to feedback – to every groan at a touch-sensitive button, to every squint at a trillion pixel megascreen. The Concept C’s interior – best viewed with Audi’s first ever folding hard-top motored away – could’ve come straight from the year 2013. Dated? Nope. More like peak common sense, before the lemmings followed Tesla over the touchscreen cliff edge.

Look at all that knurled metal switchgear. The perfectly circular steering wheel with just the right number of useful buttons, centred with an Audi logo milled from solid aluminium. No one ever did digital cockpits better than Audi, so that’s allowed to remain, shrouded in a Quattro homage binnacle.

But the modest central screen is half the size of a magazine and only folds out of its recess when summoned. Metal barrels tweak the driving mode, open the roof and the stowage cubbies. Even the ambient lighting is subtle. It’s blissfully relaxing compared with, say, a new A6 e-tron’s cockpit, but still feels purposeful like a sports car ought to.

The company might not have the minerals to call it ‘TT’, but that’s what Audi needs: a TT moment for the 21st century

You’re slung low into the car, cocooned, undistracted. Boost and Race buttons on the wheel promise some R8-inspired wallop, but there are no paddles... yet. “We found that a virtual gearbox and sound really add something to driving an electric car. Even on the racetrack, I’m faster with a car with a virtual gearbox,” said Döllner. “We’re developing it, I think we’ll have one.”

Hopefully, Audi will ditch the touch-sensitive climate control interface which glows through a translucent panel. It calls it “shy tech”. We think it’s sh**e tech. And the woollen door inserts that allow sound to breathe straight through the fabric are probably a stretch for production. An Audi with no grilles outside and no speaker grilles either? Wonders will never cease.

Otherwise, it’s all here. The right looks, the right pitch, the motivation. We know the platform exists somewhere. And now Audi’s spawned a Chinese sub-brand called, um, AUDI, it can get away with building Europe-centric sports cars without worrying they’ll tank in its biggest market. Because while we enjoy this, AUDI (not Audi) will be churning out anonymous electrobarges for Beijing businessmen.

Meanwhile in Europe, Ur-Audi needs to actually follow through with the Concept C’s clean sheet promises. The company might not have the minerals to call it ‘TT’, but that’s what Audi needs: a TT moment for the 21st century.