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There’s a late winter snowstorm blowing back home in Detroit, but here in Phoenix, the sky is clear, the air is warm, and it only enhances the guilty pleasure as I roll back the top of my Audi TT Roadster.
Guilty. Guilty. I have to come clean right up front. From the moment I first saw the concept car that became the TT, I was hooked. Virtually unchanged for production, the original coupe was curvaceous, inviting. The sleek interior, with its satiny aluminum dials and buttons, only enhanced the appeal. It was a car begging to be touched and admired, as well as driven. That’s not to say the coupe was perfect. It needed some more power — and a convertible top to complete the package. For 2001, Audi delivers on both desires.
Fast-growing Phoenix sprawls far out into the Sonora Desert, but we don’t have to drive far before making our first — pleasant — discovery: a surprising lack of rattles and squeaks. That’s something all too common with ragtops, especially those developed as an afterthought off a conventional coupe. In the case of the TT, both body styles were engineered simultaneously. There was special attention paid to ensure the roadster’s structural integrity, with high-strength steel used as reinforcement in several key areas, including the windshield frame. Audi removed the rear seats, replacing them with an aluminum bulkhead. (Which serves to support the twin rollbars silhouetting the front seats.)
The added stiffness can be felt, as well as heard. The TT is nimble and responsive, especially with Audi’s Quattro, all-wheel-drive package. The Roadster has far less body shake on rough roads than the Porsche Boxster, a key competitor.
Audi engineers wanted to make sure they wouldn’t lose the TT’s crescent moon rooflines. So they adopted a four-crossbeam ragtop that not only maintains the coupe’s distinctive shape, but reduces that booming noise you can experience driving a convertible on a windy day. Behind the seats, they added a power-operated wind deflector, but one of glass, rather than the nylon netting you find in other open-tops.
