Audi TT family expands

AUDI revealed at the 2014 Paris Motor Show further members of its TT family, including a new Roadster and a TT Sportback concept that gives the traditional coupe a five-door treatment.

The Roadster is the unsurprising new hottie in the family, perhaps the sexiest convertible the company has ever produced.

Audi has latched on to someone’s description of the new TT being "a baby R8" and is wheeling out the phrase at every opportunity, so this is effectively a baby R8 Roadster.

Certainly this new TTS drop-top, with its flat front end and taut lines, sounds properly powerful, with a 2.0-litre turbo engine making 294kW and dashing to 100 in just 3.9 seconds.

The Sportback concept, which should look like a slightly freakish uncle but doesn’t, joins the Shooting Brake and Offroad versions of TT that Audi has previously teased at motor shows, but appears the most likely to make it to market because it still looks great and widens the appeal of the brand to buyers who need a back seat.

The most striking feature is not the slightly longer, slightly wider body and extra doors, but the whopping wide grille, of which Audi head of design Mark Lichter seemed particularly proud.

“The face of a brand is important and you can see that the grille is wider here, and this is a sign of more to come, but we will be going one step further; there’s more to come and very soon we will show you how this will evolve,” he said.

Lichter says his brief is all about “making technology visible” and said that future models will somehow make light weight visible, and even quattro visible.

Is there a see-through Audi on the way? After all, if they can make a five-door TT look good, there’s not much they can’t do.