Monster in Disguise

If you thought the TT was just a cute little sportscar, think again.The new TT rs has enough venom to scare the living daylights out of you.

- Agasti Kaulgi

Volkswagen group, the company that owns Audi, is the biggest automotive giant of all time. It has bought the right brands, made the best cars and swollen its bank accounts like no other carmaker has ever managed. With eight passenger vehicle brands in its portfolio, it has a car for every need, quite literally. To keep R&D costs low and to flood the market with a variety of models, the mantra of success for VW group has been technology sharing. There’s been a lot of sharing of underpinnings, engines and other tech across titles; for instance, the previous-gen TT was actually based on the VW Golf Mk IV. And so was the Skoda Octavia. And now, most modern VW group cars are based on same flexible platforms such as the MQB and the MLB.

 

This, the new TT RS, is a bit of an exception to that trend though. Yes, it’s based on the same MQB platform that the TT S uses, but it has one crucial element that’ll not be shared with any other brand but Audi – its all-new, all-aluminium, five cylinder 2.5-litre turbocharged engine. The two other probable cars that might get this heart would be the RS Q3 and the RS3. Two primary reasons for this are that it’s been made to keep the motorsport heritage of five-cyl Audis alive and that the management at VW Group thinks there’s no other model that’s fit for this engine.