Design was always the substance of the original Audi TT.
The TT’s silhouette announced the dawn of a new century.five Audi TTs. “It’s a cool car. You don’t see them very often.” McCauley says explaining he and his husband's affection and affliction. “It was ‘the German Miata.’ ‘The hairdresser car.’ ‘It’s just a Golf with a Beetle squished on top of it.’ All these stupid things that people say.” Klaudt chimes in: “It was the first Audi design I fell in love with.
“Our idea was simply to prove that a no-compromise car of character can be built on an economically viable basis,” Peter Schreyer, then Audi’s design chief, said to the editors of the book. “We knew perfectly well that we couldn’t build a car capable of enhancing the company image if we economized at every possible opportunity, but we wanted to keep in touch with reality so that the cost controllers didn’t destroy our dreams once again.
Replendent in polished aluminum and powered by a W-12 engine, the 1991 Avus concept car was meant to evoke Auto Union race cars of the Thirties.The TT design is essentially spare. The body’s shape makes more of a statement than any adornment could: streamlined like the Auto Union racers of the Thirties but precisely fit, with flush glazing and radiused wheel wells that give some muscular heft. It was sensational then and almost universally acclaimed as the exemplum of Audi’s new design language.
Even before the TT went on sale, its styling was hinted at in the immensely attractive 1996 A4 sedan and fully expressed in the 1998 A6 sedan. The TT’s allure was already paying off as Audi sales rose through 1997, ’98, and ’99. By 2000, U.S. sales were up to 80,372. The TT’s best U.S. sales years were 2000 and 2001, when the company sold 12,027 and 12,523 units, respectively. But the glamour dust it spread across Audi mattered more.
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