Audi TT Family

Just as Fiat has expanded its 500 family to incorporate a mini-MPV (500L) and mini-crossover (500X), so Audi is readying a breeding programme for its new TT coupe. Earlier this year we saw the TT Of-road concept, which posited a small SUV based  on the sports car’s MQB underpinnings, while this month brings the TT Sportback concept, a CLA-rivalling amalgam of coupe and 5dr hatch.

The Sportback concept is 29cm longer and 6cm wider than the latest TT coupe, though a few centimetres lower too. “We’re using the TT design language because it’s accepted and iconic,” explains Audi engineering boss Ulrich Hackenberg. Not to mention the cachet of that name: buyers would, Audi reckons, prefer to be driving something with a TT rather than an A3 badge.

Happily, this concept is no mere pastiche. The aluminium-bodied Sportback doesn't just blag its design cues from the TT, but uses that car’s dash, seats, engines and quattro system. Hackenberg says it could even take the 5 cyl engine from the TT RS and upcoming RS3.

However, the show car’s production readiness is underlined by the presence of the latest gen 2.0-litre TFSI engine, whose turbos have been tweaked to help it produce just short of 400 bhp. The transmission is Audi’s dual-shift seven-speed auto, driving all four wheels.

Conceptual mishmash the TT Sportback might be, but it resolves its diverse influences rather neatly. However, Hackenberg tells Top Gear the ve-door coupe-hatch TT is less likely to reach production than that SUV-crossover (bottom).  “I see the best chance [of production] as the SUV,” Hackenberg says. “It would do best on the market. It did well in clinics.”

We’re told a production TT Of-road could reach the road within two years. Impressive alacrity from Audi, but does the world really need yet another entry into the crowded but booming SUV-crossover coupe segment instead of thisslick little five door with its lightweight alloy body?