Lovely car Lewis! Superb ride for doing those long bowling trips. Now to find a good BMW mechanic. It'll save you a fortune!
Ryan, to answer your question, yes, once you get it off the line. Even with 25psi of Turbo and the heavier duty engineering of the Quattro model engine, being a 1.8 it doesn't have the breathtaking launch of some larger blocks. (It'll still put a smile on your dial though!)
I've given it a squirt on a track with Chris Thomas in his evil XR6 Turbo and the ground I lost on the launch (automatic v. my 6 speed manual) didn't get larger as we got faster. If I was prepared to really punish the clutch, I could reduce that lost ground quite substantially as well. Once we got to some bendy stuff though, the Audi's lower CG and Quattro drive train is all over a sedan. It's hilariously sticky to the road. Every time I see a "Winding Road Ahead" sign in this car, I get a little grin and reach for the gear stick. Coming through Macquarie Pass two weeks ago, I was watching other quite good cars lurch about and I knew mine wasn't even beginning to get quick.
The TT is named for the Touring Trophy race in Wales and it is a sports tourer with some pretty heavy mod cons, not a pure performance machine. These things make it slower and heavier, but more comfortable, safer and richly featured. You can do long distances and climb out feeling pretty human. More than I can say for some cars I've owned.
But this isn't a car for flogging hard and often. I bought it and love it because it's a such an exquisitely resolved design. There's not a spare line on the thing and none you would add to it. The interior is very sleek and minimalist to the point where 6 months into owning it, I was still discovering stuff in among all the black-on black! I used to design buildings and even now, my designer's eye is still finding junctions and lines that are so well resolved that I pause and admire how so much complexity can be made to look so effortless.
It's a design classic; a thing of beauty, with a great international list of awards and it's lines are still being copied 10 years later by Audi and other manufacturers and as such, worth preserving. It's a 10 year old car that they got right and it'll be cool in another 20 years and probably longer, like old Porsche 911's. And that's the plan; I'll be keeping this one for a lot of years to come.
P.S. I saw one in Bathurst this year without the spoiler retro-fit. Very collectable!
