Published:
21 November 2023‘Freakishly fast’ is how we might have described the TT RS here – were it not for the fact that so little about the way in which the car puts its 395bhp onto the road and hurls itself into middle distance makes it seem like the engine, gearbox or four-wheel drive system is breaking a sweat in order to produce the extraordinary.
Taking off in a perfectly regulated launch, driving through all four wheels and actively throwing a huge wave of torque rearwards to lie in wait for the car’s inevitable shift of mass (rather than only doing so passively after the front wheels have begun scrabbling), the TT RS picked off the 0-60mph sprint in an average of 3.6sec.
In one direction, and with that little bit of slipperiness under its wheels that fast Audis seem to thrive on, the car actually performed the task in just 3.46sec.
Even at the former mark, the Audi really isn’t far away from supercar pace – quicker, even, than both a Ferrari F430 and a 997-generation Porsche 911 Turbo.
And it doesn’t let up. Needing just 8.4sec to hit 100mph from rest makes the TT RS a closer match for a 2017-model-year Nissan GT-R than a Porsche 718 Cayman S – the latter being shrugged off by more than a second to both 100mph and over a standing quarter mile.
In objective, straight-line terms, then, TT RS is nothing short of a monster. But the quality of its delivery isn’t abrupt or peaky, as you might imagine it would need to be.
A hint of turbo lag is evident at very low crank speeds, followed by a small but noticeable injection of urge on a flattened throttle as the needle passes 2000rpm, then another at 4000rpm on the way to a fabulous top end that runs out at 6750rpm.
