Audi TT is celebrating its 20 years on the market
This incredible car is an icon: one of the most succesful coupès of the 90s. Read the article to find out more about the Audi TT !
Compact, light and gritty. These are just a few adjectives to describe the Audi TT, one of the most successful coupes of the 90s, which in these days is celebrating its first twenty years on the market, with the facelift of the third generation, faithful in spirit to the model of 1998. There are two excellent versions: Coupe, but also Roadster. Right from the start, the car was conceived in both body variants: the 1995 Frankfurt Motor Show baptized the concept of the covered version, while at the Tokyo Motor Show of the same year the en plein air was unveiled. According to Wikipedia: “The styling of the Audi TT began in the spring of 1994 at the Volkswagen Group Design Center in California.The TT was first shown as a concept car at the 1995 Frankfurt Motor Show. The design is credited to J Mays and Freeman Thomas, with Hartmut Warkuss, Peter Schreyer,Martin Smith and Romulus Rost contributing to the award-winning interior design. A previously unused laser beam welding adaptation, which enabled seamless design features on the first-generation TT, delayed its introduction. Audi did not initially offer any type of automatic transmissionoption for the TT. However, from 2003, a dual clutch six-speed Direct-Shift Gearbox (DSG) became available, with the United Kingdom TT variants becoming the world’s first user of a dual clutch transmission configured for a right-hand drive vehicle, although the outright world first for a road car equipped with a dual clutch transmission was claimed earlier by a Volkswagen Group platform-mate, the left hand drive Volkswagen Golf Mk4 R32.”
After all, when their productive follow-up was still uncertain, Herbert Demel, at the time head of the Audi brand, proved to be peremptory in this regard: “we either build them, or none”.We all know how it went: the car entered the market in 1998, with a modern and futuristic line, very similar to the concept of three years ago, becoming the most iconic of modern Audi. After four decades, the charm of the original model is still intact, to which the next two generations have been inspired and evolved.
