A gentleman doesn't judge a book by its cover, nor a lady by what's uncovered. Vardhan Kondvikar, trying his damnedest to not hate the new Audi TT's looks, wants to know if it's a car of substance.

I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again: I don’t like the new Audi TT’s styling as much as the old car’s. Even at night, the inky skin reflecting street lights and passing headlamps, it evokes an “Hmm, all right,” not the dewy-eyed soppiness that the old car squeezed out of me. Before I saw the car in the flesh I thought it was just slightly un-photogenic, and would win me over when I saw it, but it hasn’t.

Where the old TT looked crisp and geometric, this one looks like it’s melted, especially around the haunches. Where the old TT was so perfectly balanced that you couldn’t tell which end was the front, this one is just another coupe. The interior isn’t anything spectacular either – and I was hopelessly in love with the ultra-simple old cabin. In general, I’m looking at it with pursed lips and a squint, not wide-eyed wonder. And that means I’m finding it ever so slightly difficult to warm to Audi’s new baby. It’s very probably a damned good car, improved in so many ways, but I’m not exactly wetting my pants when I daydream about owning one. Bugger. This hasn’t started well. If you can’t get excited about a car that costs something above Rs 30 lakh, you just know there’re going to be tears.

What exactly is wrong with it, then? Nothing, on the face of it. It’s a perfectly nice looking car, with a proper coupe shape and clever detailing, particularly the headlamps and wing mirrors, but it’s… Well, it’s just not an Audi TT. It’s sort of what everyone was grumbling about when the Porsche 911 got its tree-frog look in the mid-Nineties. It didn’t matter that it was the kind of evolution that design needs once in a while – we just wanted the 911 to look like a 911. And it’s the same here. The new 911’s gone back to the round-eyed look we love – and I’m finding myself hoping that the next TT goes back to the ’true’ TT look. That’s not a good thing, seeing that the car isn’t even four months old and will probably be around for the next six or seven years. Oh dear.
There’s a problem with how I feel, though, and it’s to do with avoiding vicious attacks on my person. Top Gear shares an office floor with Femina – and if I told any of their staff that I’d judged a car by how pretty it was I’d be looking at the sharp end of a stiletto heel. From below.

So, reluctantly, I have to give the new TT a chance. I should drive it a bit, see how it goes, see its inner beauty if you will. Grumbling loudly – it’s 3am, which gives me some right to be grumpy – I give it a whirl.

And you know what? I’m really glad I did. Really. I’ve read all about how it’s a better sports car than the old one – which wasn’t really a sports car at all, let’s be honest – and it’s all true. It feels sweeter, more enthusiastic, more eager to take on a sinuous road. A lot of this extra enthusiasm, I suspect, has to do with the engine our car used. It’s not a big engine, the 1984cc TFSI, but it’s a peach, sweet, juicy and just tart enough to make you feel deliciously rude when you blip the throttle and wake up sleeping rickshaw drivers. There’s a surprisingly loud – and very pleasant – noise when you prod the engine’s buttocks, and the rev needle climbs surprisingly quickly. There’s no Quattro four-wheel-drive system with this engine, but well, ok. I’ll live with it, as long as this engine makes it to India. The 1.8 turbo we know from the old car, and it’s nice, but this one’s way cooler. And the 3.2 V6 should be much more refined and powerful, but from what I’ve heard, it isn’t as much fun. The thing is, Audi shot themselves in the foot when they only brought in the base version of the old car – at this price you don’t want to live with manual-adjust seats. It’s much more likely that this time they’ll get the V6 in as a direct import, without homologation, and stuff it to the gills with equipment. I don’t know how much place that’ll leave for the 2.0, which will have to be tediously homologated. If it comes in though, I hope they offer it with the S-Tronic gearbox, not the six-speed manual we were given. Nothing really wrong with the manual, except for a longer throw than I’d have liked in a sports car, but the S-Tronic, which is what Audi confusingly calls the famous DSG now, is probably the world’s best flappy-paddle ’box, and it would just be so much nicer.

More than anything, it would go so well with the car’s new-found cornering abilities. It grips really well, for one, even without four-wheel-drive, and it corners flat. It rides sweetly for a sports car too, with surprising quietness over road acne, and though ground clearance is a bit worrying over larger speed breakers, it shouldn’t be a problem for anyone other than side-skirt-obsessed boy racers. It brakes extremely well too; in fact,
having just driven our Fiat Adventure, which has special time-lag brakes, I nearly hurled myself out of the windscreen when I squeezed the TT’s brakes too hard. About the only thing that needs work is the steering, which is far too light for a proper driver’s car, and doesn’t have enough feel through a corner. But hey, at least you can hurtle around a corner in the new TT, with the traction control light going bananas and the tyres singing like stool pigeons after a session with the rubber hoses.

Part of the reason why this car is so much better on the road is a new magnetorheological suspension system, which is a bit complicated and has to do with electric currents and molecules realigning themselves, which numbs my brain every time I think about it. To make it extremely simple, the suspension has a Normal and a harder Sport mode, accessible via a little button on the centre console, and makes the car corner flatter than ever when you really want to go cuckoo. Another interesting thing is the other button on the console, which operates a retractable spoiler. This pops out automatically to help stability at high speeds, but or can be operated via the switch to help you look cool. It’s a much better effort than the pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey thing on the old car – it works well and it’s handsome, so it doesn’t ruin the shape. If only it were a better shape, though. (Sorry, I promise I won’t bellyache about the looks again.)

So, ok then. I was partly wrong, and whoever came with adages like “Beauty is only skin deep” was fairly accurate. This is most certainly a good car. But hang on – I still don’t like the cabin. Would someone please explain why the dials need those awful hoods, when they worked perfectly well without any sort of shroud on the old car? Or why, when the double-barrelled air-con vents in the old car looked so cool, did they have to put in a third Cyclops-like eye in there? Or why they had to put that scalloped edge on the dash? Or, worst of all, why the quality has dropped. There are fewer bits of milled aluminium around, and the plastics, especially around the console, feel well below Audi’s usual standards. Sigh. You know, there’s a saying: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

And I think that could have applied to the rest of the car too. Sure, the stuff underneath wasn’t great and had to be taken care of – and I really appreciate what they’ve done. But surely there was no need to mess up that art-museum body? I have to apologise now – because I am going to talk about the looks again. And I’m talking about them because they’re so vital to this car’s success. The old TT wasn’t a great sports car, but its looks overrode all that. I think Audi decided that this time round the car would have more arrows in its quiver, but in so doing they’ve gone and lost the bow, which isn’t clever.

The consolation is that the pics of the cabriolet look sweeter, and if it is brought to India, that’s definitely a car I’d want to be seen in. And apologies to my friends at Femina, but you see, this is a car I’m going to take to a party, not settle down with for a life. It may perhaps be nice to have a car that makes good conversation after sex (as it were) and cooks well and has many other sterling qualities, but hey, seeing what this car was intended to do, a dynamite figure is where it’s at.