Audi TT Q shapes up

Audi has given the strongest hint yet that a small SUV is the most likely of its three TT concepts to reach production.

The German premium car-maker has delivered three concept cars based on its third-generation TT coupe and convertible, and each of them has garnered support internally and externally.

There was the three-door Audi Allroad Shooting Brake concept (which previewed pieces of the upcoming TT's design language) from the 2013 Detroit motor show, the five-door TT Sportback concept from Paris last year and, finally, the five-door TT Offroad concept (pictured) from last year's Beijing motor show.

That's before we mention the storming TT Sport Quattro concept with its frightening 309kW of power from just two turbocharged litres of powerplant.

And it's the TT Allroad concept that has emerged as the production front-runner, in spite of the four-door TT Sportback being lauded internally as the most beautiful looking of the trio.

Audi's engineering boss, Dr Ulrich Hackenberg, has suggested the baby SUV has the clearest production future of the three and could be in showrooms within two years, even if it's not the crowd favourite.

"The best was clearly the last one: the Sportback," Dr Hackenberg admitted. "This is the one that is the most harmonious and emotional; my favourite. It's useful for a young family but it's still a sports car."

It was said to have sports-car performance, too, thanks to a crunching 294kW version of the family EA888 2.0-litre four-cylinder petrol engine up front. With all-wheel drive traction, Audi claimed it would crunch to 100km/h in just 3.8 seconds to trail the all-new R8 V10 by just 0.3 seconds.

At the time, Audi called Dr Hackenberg's favourite an "elongated sculpture", which was about the same length as the A3 sedan, 290mm longer than the TT coupe and 60mm wider than the TT, but 30mm lower at the roofline.

It sat on a wheelbase 120mm longer than the coupe's (all of it given over to the rear-seat passengers), but what nobody knew at the time was that it was the last car designed at Audi before Wolfgang Egger's design reign was supplanted by the Prologue-driven Marc Lichte era.

"But if you look at the model range, we have a similar car in the A3 sedan and in the SUV segment at that level, we have some space and that makes the TT Q car the favourite," Dr Hackenberg admitted.

"The decision... I don't talk too much about internal discussions," he said, tongue very much in cheek. "To realise such a car, it's possible to do that in two years."

The TT Offroad concept runs a 215kW/380Nm version of the EA888 turbo motor, though it included a 40kW/220Nm electric motor inside the six-speed dual-clutch transmission.

Both motors power the front wheels and the electric motor harvests energy from them under braking and coasting, and the TT Offroad concept is all-wheel drive, even though there is no mechanical link to the rear-end. Instead, the rear axles are driven by an 85kW/270Nm electric motor fitted to the back-end, which draws its power from a 12kW/h lithium-ion battery beneath the boot floor.

Audi claimed the plug-in hybrid concept would stretch to 50km of range when running as a pure electric vehicle and that it could eke 900km out of a full battery and a full tank of fuel.

If and when it reaches production, it will run a similar powertrain to the stock TT Coupe and Convertible ranges in production, though Dr Hackenberg would not rule out electric boosting later in its life cycle.

So why build three concept cars on the TT when most of Audi's internal projections always suggested the SUV version would be the production favourite, and when Audi knew full well the showroom existence of a model called the A3 sedan?

"For the TT, we want to grow it into a family and we need additional model lines.

"But the TT 'family' is still in a place where we can create our design language for it. We gave them the opportunity to further that design language with the TT concepts.

"Do to that, we needed to give them different vehicle concepts to work with," Dr Hackenberg said.