Gadgetory

the Audi TT once referred to of its smirking Lee as this little ladybug of a thing among sports car purists not anymore this third generation gets an awful lot of things right and puts an edge on the product technologically on the road and to the eye let's try this all-new 2016 third-generation TT Roadster and check the tape howdy was kind of sneaky with this one back in January of 2014 we got an early look at what would be the style of the new TT but it was in a concept mini electric station wagon the front clip though arrived almost unchanged on this new car and I gotta say it's the handsomest TT yet in three generations and unlike a lot of complete generation updates this one's dimensions don't meaningfully change anywhere length width height even weight all about the same as the outgoing car we have a roadster with the cloth tough there's also a coupe it has some little tiny back seats in there our car instead where the back seats would go is where the top does go that coupe by the way can also be had as a hotter performance TTS the Roadster doesn't come that way your first reaction when you get on the new TT is where did everything go it looks like we're back in the 60s it's a blank - with some vents that's because the star of the show is the virtual cockpit over there in front of the driver that's a twelve point three inch virtual all LCD instrument panel the gauges are virtual and they can either be full front and center like you see or with a click of a button they move backstage and you can go full map for example pretty impressive driving all this is a quad-core NVIDIA GPU and they've added a couple of new interesting buttons on the wheel those get you into submenus and one of the first thing your passengers are gonna say is wait a minute where's my ability to control stuff you actually can see that screen pretty well from here but it's far from optimal this is clearly not a car where the passenger is supposed to be fussing with stuff but instead hanging on for dear life and of course you've got your nmi controls down here excellent voice command touch pad on top of the knob this is all pretty standard Audi stuff as is the 4G LTE connection that powers all this including an excellent online search and the ability to go photorealistic on the maps at certain elevation levels the other interesting part of cabin craft Audi is done here is to get rid of your traditional bank of HVAC controls and instead embed everything in the knobs on the vents five vents five knobs the outer ones control your seat climate and heating and the center ones handle temperature and fan and air flow direction it's super clear fast to use nice system and blessedly Audi's dump the MDI the proprietary multi device interface and now uses good old USB a 16 TT is powered by a 2 liter inline-4 turbocharged and direct injected of course 220 horse that's up 9 from last year 258 pound-feet of torque that's the same as last year one choice of a gearbox in the US a six-speed dual-clutch automated manual no six-speed manual of a here and all wheel drive Quattro of course zero to sixty happens in 5.6 seconds slightly quicker if you get the coop faster still if you get the coop TTS our car weighs about 3400 pounds including that ragtop mechanism does about 26 average 30 on the highway underway three words in this new TT light bright and tight that's what it feels like in terms of powertrain in terms of openness and in terms of perceived weight on the ground one of that light perception is from power that comes on but almost no turbo like I really if the solutes are put in a really good job on that especially when it's a to later for that it's sitting under that turbo so they'll have to fall back up but the power comes on very effortless now when it does come on it flows in one of the fastest dual clutch gearbox is out there now we've experienced this gearbox before and it isn't good one but what's so great about it are the lightning fast ships when you press it and the extremely good table manners what you don't we've seen how you drive to select before this I believe the first time when it can also affect the logic of the Quattro all-wheel drive system for example in dynamic mode which is sport mode it can tell the Quattro the system to behave with a bias toward the rear wheels by default one of my favorite engineering accomplishments you can't see and that is this sort of invisible tub that I'm sitting in formed by the windshield the header and this power wind buffer behind me when that's up and everything else is up around me but tops all the way down you've got a very isolated beautifully climate controlled scenario inside of here oh it's augmented by these little Nick heaters back here on these optional sport seats they blow warm air over your dead bottom line is you're gonna love fall evenings on the road top down the top goes up and down quickly about ten seconds either direction and trunk space doesn't bury it remains small issue no matter where the top is but at least you know what to expect we're gonna start about 46 for for a TT Roadster by the time I had some tact those nice neck heating seats and a surprisingly affordable piano audio option I'm somewhere in the low 52 range the cabin tech is hard to beat on this car though your passenger may say otherwise the ride handling and the power and the delivery and the whole light bright tight way it drives are outstanding I love the looks now there's not much to dislike about the new TT or cars driven CNET style standing by now at CNET on cars.com click on the road