Audi TT - long-term review

This is a bonus update. We’ve said our fare-thee-wells to the Audi TT just as Audi itself has waved auf wiedersehen. Because it’s not building them anymore. The wider British public too has, over the past few years, implicitly bid it a cheerio. Because nobody’s buying them.

Which, for the ninth time, remains a shame because it’s such a cohesive, attractive and clean bit of car design. And to confirm Greg Potts’ contention as he grapples with an uninspiringly coloured Jaguar F-Type, the TT really springs to life in bolder colours.

In the later months of our time with it, I remember driving alongside an electric blue MkIII TT – same ‘Final Edition’ spec as the one we ran, complete with the same fixed rear wing and black styling pack – and it looked so cool.

Though, sorry fellow-TT-fwiend - ours looked cooler still, resplendent in a metallic ‘Tango Red’, a colour that really made the TT’s shapes pop, out there in the so-called ‘real world’. Also handy for when you’ve lost it in a car park filled with a deluge of grey metal. Which definitely never happened to us.

Keen German enthusiasts will have already noted that our mention of auf wiedersehen up top is incorrect, but we think not: we reckon this shouldn’t be a goodbye, because we want to meet it again. And the only way that’ll happen is as an EV, which actually makes sense.

It’s no great shock to discover the TT isn’t – nor ever has been – the finest drivers’ car out there, even if the MkIII signs off as the best resolved of all three generations. The engine in the one we ran – a punchy 2.0-litre turbo – was devoid of any real character, and while it was grippy, it always felt a little aloof. Distant.

But it was a simple, attractively styled car to own and live with (it was pretty much faultless in our time with it). So the TT could make for an excellent EV. Because after all, EVs rarely win us over by being memorable to drive, but if it was handsome, had a great interior, and easy to live with? That’s a promising recipe for an e-TT.