Audi TT RS

Audi Sport’s 2.5-litre five-cylinder swansong is a true sports car and proves the TT isn’t just style over substance

The original Audi TT RS first launched in 2009 and came with a big mechanical lure under its bonnet.Audi hadn’t built a five-cylinder engine since it retired the epic, Porsche-fettled 2.2-litre unit used in the fondly remembered Audi RS2 Avant.But the brand instead referenced an even bigger legend: the Audi Ur-Quattro of the 1980s, a name custom-built to generate a fizz in anyone old enough to recall the heroics of Group B rallying – or young enough to have watched the highlights on YouTube.The 2.5-litre in-line five cooked up for the Audi TT lived up to the billing, producing 335bhp and the kind of rasping, evocative soundtrack that fostered the idea of it being a V10 split asunder.Sadly, the car around it proved less compelling – a symptom familiar to the TT and one not fixed when power was increased to 355bhp for the Audi TT RS Plus model in 2012.This generation of TT RS, however, produces 395bhp which means it can keep up with Porsches. But glowing praise in an Autocar road test needs to be earned by much more than raw speed alone.To secure that, Audi Sport needs to have found the dynamic finesse and driver engagement that was so obviously missing in the model’s last incarnation, and that’s a task typically requiring time and money.