Audi Concept C could deliver a TT moment for the 21st century

Did you spot that Audi has abandoned two-door cars? The TT has not been replaced, the R8 is still missed, and the A5 name now sits on the new A4. Even the Germans appear to be having trouble justifying that particular piece of logic.

Audi Concept C fills the sports car gap

Audi’s new design team has poured its sporting ambitions into an attractive coupé-cabriolet named the Concept C. Disregard the title: apparently, there was not time to devise a proper one. And, despite the obvious protests, it will not wear a TT badge. Audi CEO Gernot Döllner says it is too large and too costly for that name. Boo, hiss.

Audi claims the car is 95 per cent representative of the production version. Due to arrive in 2027, it will use the platform that was initially intended for the electric Porsche Boxster and has been delayed more than HS2. It also serves as a declaration of how future Audis will be styled.

Photography: Mark Riccioni

Huge grilles, purposeless creases, pretend exhaust outlets, anonymous light bars and perhaps even interiors suffering ‘death by touchscreen’ are being left behind. In their place come clean, understated surfaces and cabins filled with physical controls, intended to revive Audi’s status for best-in-class interiors accompanied by satisfying button clicks.

Still, let us not become too excited. A decade ago, Audi revealed four production-ready TT concepts: a stripped-back, track-focused machine; a sleek four-door saloon; a shooting-brake estate; and, inevitably, a warped crossover. Earlier still, it dangled the prospect of a reborn 700bhp Quattro. None of them reached dealerships.

Audi has led us on before, raising hopes of sporty four-ringed cars only to scrunch them up and turn them into another uninspiring SUV. Yet the Concept C inspires optimism because it may achieve what even Porsche has struggled to deliver.

The delayed electric sports car platform

A brief reminder: in 2023, Porsche declared that the replacements for the Boxster and Cayman pairing would be electric. All at once, the uproar over replacing naturally aspirated flat-sixes with turbocharged flat-fours seemed as rebellious as a church knitting circle. To retain the sensation of a mid-engined car, the batteries were to be stacked behind the seats rather than placed beneath the floor.

There were a couple of issues. First, Porsche – alongside Goldman Sachs, an organisation famously unfailing in its major investments – put money into Swedish battery start-up Northvolt to produce the cells. Northvolt then collapsed, filing for bankruptcy and burning through $5.8 billion. The Boxster and Cayman have been removed from order books because they do not comply with new EU cybersecurity regulations, and replacements will not arrive before 2027 at the earliest.

And, when the batteries finally become available, will Porsche customers even want them? Taycan values have fallen sharply, profit margins have deteriorated and inconsistent government incentives have prompted Porsche to slow its frantic EV push. Meanwhile, whispers along the Nürburgring Straße suggest its engineers are simply dissatisfied with the handling and range their electric sports car is delivering.

That may present Audi with precisely the opening it requires. It could launch the platform while Porsche thinks again. Unlike Porsche, Audi needs a sporting halo model: something it can place in the F1 paddock next year. And unlike Porsche, nobody expects an Audi – regardless of its eventual badge – to be dazzling to drive. Audi’s strengths are design and that brushed-aluminium impression of solid, high-tech German engineering. Fit two motors and quattro all-wheel drive follows naturally; it is embedded in the Audi philosophy. Thirty years ago, the MkI TT was nearly branded as a junior Boxster Porsche before corporate politics overturned the plan. The irony.

The compact, neatly planted Concept C recalls the balanced simplicity that made the TT a defining symbol of 1990s urban chic. Its 3D-extruded ‘Avus’ six-spoke wheels will send Audi devotees into a nostalgic frenzy. Yet the contours narrowing towards the abrupt tail and flowing down the rear haunches also hint at the original R8. The slatted rear deck references both the R8 LMS endurance racers and Will Smith’s RSQ transport in the 2004 future-noir film I, Robot.

As for another R8, potentially built on the Lamborghini Temerario’s hybrid twin-turbo V8 architecture, do not dismiss the prospect. “Of course there’s room for another car, but we need to go step by step,” says Döllner.

Audi Concept C design and cabin details

Audi offers no figures for range, performance, mass or price, but it is more than willing to discuss styling. The upright front ‘grille’ takes inspiration from the 1936 Auto Union Type C racing car and the 2006 Audi A6’s Singleframe mesh. In this case, it is merely a panel behind which the forward-facing radar can be concealed.

Pair that darkened pillar with the four-element headlights and the front end carries traces of Bugatti Chiron. Audi’s designers blush at the comparison, maintaining that the ‘quattro’ LEDs were chosen because the brand is inseparable from the number four: four rings, four-wheel drive, 4mm from your rear bumper.

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At the rear, the approach is similarly minimalist. There is no false mesh or pretend exhaust styling like that found on recent RS3s and Q5s. Thank goodness. Four-element red LEDs echo the front treatment, while the missing rear window is supposedly there to “save weight”. Hopefully that is a concept-car indulgence. There is only one reversing camera, however, so let us hope Audi has finally seen sense and abandoned its ridiculous Virtual Mirrors.

While walking around the Concept C with designer Francesco d’Amore, I asked directly whether Audi had been affected by recent criticism: that its cars had become needlessly aggressive and overworked, losing the matinee-idol correctness of the early 2000s. He maintained that his team do not “read the comments” – invariably a sensible decision – and that this simply represents a fresh direction. With Massimo Frascella, formerly of JLR, now in charge, it is hardly surprising that Audi is moving towards reductive, extremely simple design.

The interior, though? It surely must answer customer feedback: every complaint about touch-sensitive buttons and every squint at a trillion-pixel mega-screen. Best appreciated with Audi’s first folding hard-top lowered, the Concept C cabin could have emerged directly from 2013. Outdated? Not at all. It instead feels like common sense at its peak, before the lemmings followed Tesla off the touchscreen cliff.

Take in the knurled-metal controls, the flawlessly circular steering wheel carrying exactly the necessary number of useful buttons, and an Audi emblem machined from solid aluminium at its centre. Audi has always excelled at digital instrument displays, so that feature can stay, housed beneath a binnacle that references Quattro.

The restrained central display, meanwhile, is about half the size of a magazine and rises from its recess only when requested. Metal rotary controls select the driving mode, operate the roof and open the storage compartments. Even the ambient illumination is discreet. Compared with the cockpit of, for example, a new A6 e-tron, it is wonderfully calming, while still having the purposeful character a sports car should possess.

The company might not have the minerals to call it ‘TT’, but that’s what Audi needs: a TT moment for the 21st century

You sit low in the car, enclosed and free from distractions. Boost and Race buttons on the wheel suggest R8-like punch, although there are no paddles... yet. “We found that a virtual gearbox and sound really add something to driving an electric car. Even on the racetrack, I’m faster with a car with a virtual gearbox,” said Döllner. “We’re developing it, I think we’ll have one.”

Hopefully Audi will remove the touch-sensitive climate-control panel, which shines through a translucent surface. Audi calls it “shy tech”. We think it is sh**e tech. The woollen door inserts, designed to let sound pass directly through the material, are also likely to be ambitious for a production car. An Audi without external grilles or speaker grilles? Miracles may yet happen.

Otherwise, the ingredients are present: the right appearance, the right proposition and the right intent. We know the platform exists somewhere. Now that Audi has created a Chinese sub-brand called, rather awkwardly, AUDI, it can build Europe-focused sports cars without fearing they will flop in its largest market. While we enjoy this, AUDI – not Audi – will be producing anonymous electric barges for Beijing businesspeople.

In Europe, meanwhile, Ur-Audi must genuinely honour the clean-sheet promises of the Concept C. The company may lack the nerve to call it ‘TT’, but that is exactly what Audi needs: a TT moment for the 21st century.