First drive: the new Audi TT

Sorry for starting on a bum note, but do we have permission to be slightly disappointed with the design of the new TT?

That’s up to you, but we’d understand if that was your gut reaction. On the other hand, as lead exterior designer Jurgen Loffler tells TG.com, ‘When you’ve come up with a car that looks like the TT, would you rip it up and start again?’ 

Fair point. At least it hasn’t ballooned in size – at 4.18m, it’s almost identical in length to the previous one, and it's the same height. There’s an extra 37mm in the wheelbase, more bootspace, and shorter overhangs. Matrix LED headlights are an option, and make the car look even angrier than the regular lamps. There’s also a wider range of colours but, predictably, the new TT looks best in a steely grey on 20in alloys, and a bit weedy in yellow. Jurgen admits to being a Porsche 911 fan, both in its original and latest 991 iterations. ‘I guess the TT is our 911,’ he adds, as a further justification for this nuanced third-gen take. Fingers crossed for a 553bhp twin turbo.

Not a light visual reboot, then. 

Nope. The all-new TT is exactly that, and although efficiency is one of the key buzzwords here, Audi insists it’s also highly driver-focused and a load of fun. Using the VW group’s seemingly endlessly configurable MQB (modular transverse matrix) underpinnings, the 2.0-litre TFSi weighs in at 1230kg, 50kg less than the equivalent outgoing model (the quattro is 1410kg – still good). It’s 23 per cent stiffer, and mixes aluminium with high tensile steel to save weight and optimise the centre of gravity, while maximising its passive safety attributes. Clever stuff.

Lots of technology inside, too?

It’s stuffed to the gunwhales. The big story is the Virtual Cockpit, which does away with the central screen and allows the driver to spool through and personalise display settings on a 12.3in screen in the main binnacle – grouped under ‘infotainment’ or ‘classic’ interfaces. First impressions suggest that Audi is onto something pretty seismic here. Partnering with Nvidia, there’s enough firepower in the system to perform eight billion computing operations per second. Flipping through all the options, via wheel-mounted buttons or using the MMI rotary knob, is initially discombobulating, but will inevitably become easier with familiarity. The resolution on the Google Earth and Street View sat nav is so good it renders parked cars and trees perfectly. Full connectivity is available – the data transmission module is 10 times faster than 3G – and the TT will also perform full intercourse with your smartphone and stream music. All UK TTs get handwriting recognition on the controller for audio and nav inputs (it works but feels oddly anachronistic in these surroundings), and there’s an optional Bang & Olufsen 12-speaker, 680-watt sound system. Another thing: the system effectively learns your most frequently used phone numbers and destinations, and can upload info. If only Audi could licence Scarlett Johansson as the car’s voice…

This is heady stuff. Will I actually use all this technology, though? 

Maybe, maybe not, but it’s impressively far-out. The new TT tiptoes into the realms of AI, and when you factor in its ingeniously reimagined air con system and the obligatory high quality trim and materials, its cabin is a key USP. It's also the first car in which the bigger-picture privacy debate raises its ugly head, a subject that’s an especially hot potato in Germany (remember when the US government’s NSA got caught snooping on German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s phone calls?). Needless to say, Audi is alert to data protection sensitivities. None of which will matter when you have so much stuff to fiddle with when you’re stuck on the M25. Just don’t send any saucy selfies to the TT’s MMI.

Thanks for the warning. Can we talk about the car now, please? Can the TT handle itself against the likes of the BMW 235i, Merc SLK, and Porsche Cayman?

It’s good, perhaps even surprisingly so depending on the amount of baggage you bring when it comes to Audi. The likely big seller, the 2.0-litre, 228bhp TFSi, is a proper little belter. Its ride quality and damping prove that the wooden and lumpy Audis of yore are now officially history. Yes, we’d like more natural steering feel, and the dual-shift S-tronic ’box can feel artificial at times, but it’s rapid, secure and a lot more interactive than you might expect, whether in front drive or quattro spec. It’s notably more agile than before, has a pleasingly pointy front end, needs really pushed before grip expires, and the brakes are good, too. The auto is faster to 62mph (5.3 seconds) but the manual is sweeter to drive and more efficient (47.9mpg overall, 137g/km CO2). A Drive Select system tailors the car’s throttle, sonic and steering responses across Comfort, Dynamic, Efficiency, Auto and Individual modes. There’s an e-diff on front drive TTs, torque vectoring on quattro versions, and the option of magnetic dampers. It all adds up to a bewildering load of possibilities, but the oily bits underneath are genuinely impressive.

Are the other versions any good?

Yes. Company car types are advised to check out the 183bhp 2.0 Tdi ultra, whose 67.3 combined mpg figure and 110 carbons is a tempting combo in terms of BIK. We still prefer petrol power in a coupe, but this one doesn't feel like the front axle is coated in concrete, and the six-speed manual ’box is sweet. Audi is sticking to turbo four-pots for emissions and economy reasons, so the 309bhp TTS is as feisty as it currently gets (it doesn't land in the UK until next Spring). TG.com only drove that around the Ascari circuit, where it felt much happier than any previous TT ever has on a track. Only the S-tronic ’box lets it down.

So it’s mostly good news, then.

It is. The new TT TFSi Sport starts at £29,860, the TTS from £38,900. It's still not as sharp as its BMW or Porsche rivals, and we reckon Audi could have been bolder with the exterior design. But as an overall package, it’s mighty tempting, and it moves the technology arms race along at a fair old rate of knots. That in itself will give it a surefire audience. 

First drive: Cadillac ATS Coupe

What's this?

This is the new Cadillac ATS Coupe - the two-door version of the smallest Caddy saloon. It runs on virtually the same underpinnings - though the front and rear tracks are fractionally wider - the main difference being the lower roofline and the deletion of two doors.

This car will soon be fulfilling the coupe role for the whole of the ATS/CTS range, which share the same platform, as the current CTS Coupe will not be replaced anytime soon. Likewise, as much as we love ‘em, there will not be an estate version of either car anywhere in their immediate future as the simple fact is they don't sell in the SUV-crazed US.

The styling is quite similar to the ATS saloon's. How much has been changed?

The strong family resemblance - the vertical headlights and crisp creases - belies the fact that everything other than the bonnet is a totally new. Including the Cadillac badge, which now no longer has the laurels around the shield.

Are the looks the only real difference between this and the ATS saloon?

Not entirely. Even though it uses a lot of the same components as the saloon, they've been subtly remixed in this US-produced BMW 4-Series competitor. Engine choices are now just the 272bhp turbo 2.0-litre four-cylinder and normally aspirated 321bhp 3.6-litre V6 - the rather dull 2.5-litre four has not been invited to join this line up.

The suspension has also been tuned to be slightly more taut and 18-inch wheels now come as standard. Brembo brakes are standard all round, as is a comprehensive safety package that should give you no excuse but to blame yourself if you have an accident. All-wheel drive can be specified and driven by either of the two engines, but if you want a rear-drive manual that's only available with the 2.0 turbo.

What about inside?

Cadillac is very proud of what it calls its ‘cut-and-sew' leather interiors. Rightly so on the basis of the Coupe's cabin. But the key thing is the driving position, which is adjustable enough to allow a variety of shaped and sized drivers to find a comfortable perch.

The steering wheel is a little thicker than on the saloon, the whole feeling just a little tighter and slicker. The rear seats are nothing to write home about but they're no better or worse than the German competition. The big win is that the Cue infotainment system has been sped up and debugged so it now works much more smoothly. But we still think you should press on the metal strips rather than the plastic to operate the secondary controls.

How does it drive?

Most of the criticisms of the ATS focused around that 2.5-litre powertrain. With that option gone, there is very little to moan about and a lot to like. It immediately feels quite a lot more rigid than the saloon, transmitting appreciably more info to all points of bodily contact. And the ears - neither of the engines is particularly sonorous, even with the active noise manipulation.

We didn't get a huge amount of seat time, so have to reserve judgment of its handling at anything above 60mph. But it shares the light and immediately wieldy feel that is a trademark of all the ATS/CTS range. It's a great base from which to produce the cars we've all been waiting for - the V Spec models. Subjectively, it feels somewhere between an Audi A5 and a BMW 4-Series.

Should I buy one?

If you like the styling and don't want to join the mass ranks of German coupe buyers, the ATS coupe would be a good alternative. It's got competitive performance, quality and technology. All it lacks now is the universally accepted and desired brand image to go with them. But that's coming.

Welcome to the new Mazda MX-5

This is the new MX-5, due on the roads next summer. We don't need to explain what MX-5s have been all about for this past quarter century. So let's get straight onto what makes this one more of an MX-5 than ever.

The designers say the proportions have been framed to flatter the people inside it. The sitting position is further back and lower. The shovel front end is sharp and far more aggressive, its headlights seeming to have been slashed out of the bumper. Two new lines peel back across the bonnet towards the screen pillars. The rear arches swell out in a way that makes the tail taper and look even shorter.

Its actual lines and forms are quite a departure from the previous generations. But their spirit is exactly the same: desirable but simple, a shape that should bes eloquent about the simple fun of driving the thing. There's a newfound feistiness to the design, emphasised by slashes and sharp muscle lines. The aggression offsets the smaller size – to give you an idea how small, this car is on 16-inch wheels.

The cabin blurs the visual boundary between what's inside and what's outside, by wrapping the door colour wraps over into the interior. The big tacho takes centre stage. To avoid the traditional convertible hair muss, the windscreen, quarter windows and cockpit were shaped to smooth the airflow at speed when the roof's down.

As to the way it goes down the road, it's engineered to provide a greater dose of that MX-5 speciality: sharp reactions and a transparent connection between you and the road. People who've driven prototypes say it combines  even more agility than before, with a more suppler ride. This should help it cope with our trademarked Great British Rubbish Tarmac. Unfortunately these people work for Mazda so are biased. We'll have to see for ourselves next year.

Under the lowered bonnet, there's no turbo to be seen. Engines are from Mazda's quick-responding high-revving SkyActiv high-compression petrol line. Strangely the company won't officially say even the capacity yet. But we gather the sizes won't actually change from where they are in the Mazda3, at 1.5-litres and 2.0-litres. They have been modified to run longitudinally, but the power probably won't change, so that's 165bhp for the 2.0.

That's very much the same power as the MX-5 has now, but it's 10 percent lighter so the 0-62mph time should come down to the low-sevens.

Yes, to make sure the engine and steering's efforts aren't wasted, it's lighter. The drop is 100kg or so, which means it'll be just about a neat tonne. In part its lightness stems from the fact there's less of it: it's 105mm shorter, as well as lower. The centre of gravity has dropped, and the body uses a high proportion of aluminium at either end so it'll be keen to change direction.

Suspension is multi-link at the back and aluminium double wishbones at the front. All very much a sports-car layout. To keep the driveline's responses rigid and precise, the diff housing at the rear is rigidly connected to the six-speed gearbox.

Anyway, a quick reminder of what an MX-5 is and always has been. It's the simple pleasures, pleasures strong enough to have sold very nearly a million copies over the past quarter-century.

It's about snaking down a country lane at dusk, smelling the tress and grass. About the instinctive manoeuvrability of a compact two-seater, whether going slowly or blatting through a favourite roundabout with a cheeky little drift. The feeling of cogs meshing in a short-throw gearbox. About the fun of throwing the roof back without waiting for some cumbersome mechanical contraption to do the job for you. And of sneaking through town, catching a reflection of yourself in a plate-glass window. At an attainable price. Fancy all that? Think this new MX-5 might make the grade? Comments below.

Is Morgan's special beautiful or ugly?

No sooner have we picked some Salon Prive highlights and Morgan has gone and torn them up somewhat. The olde worlde British carmaker has gone berserk and produced one of the more crackers creations we've seen recently. Ladies and gentleman, the Morgan SP1.

The initials of its name stand for ‘Special Projects'; departments dedicated to specialist creations are all the rage at the moment, and this is the first product of Morgan's.

Round headlamps and liberal wood usage aside, it couldn't be much further removed from Morgan's previous produce. It looks more like something West Coast Customs might have rolled out, its front-hinged bonnet and dished alloy wheels being particularly eye-popping.

Every aspect of the car has been cherry-picked by its owner-to-be. The ash wood frame is combined with African Bubinga red hardwood, which complements the colour scheme while also signifying the buyer's business life in Africa, we're told.

The aluminium panels wear several layers of paint, a black base trickling through the bold red hue above it. The styling is inspired by Morgan's 2009 LifeCar concept, itself spun off the Aero 8. The interior is similarly bold, with wildly sculptured wooden seats, some ‘pre-flight' toggle switches for a dramatic starting procedure and the distinctly un-Morgan addition of an iPad-based infotainment system, though it is fixed to the dashboard by some hand-stitched leather straps, so traditionalists can relax a little.

At the SP1's heart is the 3.7-litre Ford V6 from the Morgan Roadster; there it produces 280bhp, but the SP1's new engine management system and custom exhaust may have boosted this a little. There's an upgraded suspension system, too, though just how heavily a Morgan's Marmite dynamics can be altered is a discussion for elsewhere.

There's far less doubt about how many heads the SP1 will turn on the lawns of Salon Prive this week. Lots, in other words.

This is just the start of Morgan's Special Projects era, and the team have already said they can't wait for their next challenge. So give them one: search the depths of your imagination and tell us what your dream Morgan comprises of below...

New MX-5: it's coming tomorrow

Mazda is going into publicity overdrive as it prepares to simultaneously launch the all-new MX-5 (or Miata, if you're American) in three cities during the early hours of September 4th. Mazda is pulling out all the stops, with live streaming from an event in Monterey while events take place in Tokyo and Barcelona. We'll be reporting from the latter.

First though, a very brief history lesson: since debuting 25 years ago, the Mazda MX-5 has become the definitive affordable roadster. Inspired by British sports cars from the 1960s - think MGB and Lotus Elan - the MX-5 launched combining their glamour and driver appeal with the reliability and affordability of a hatchback. Needless to say, it's proved a winning formula, and over 900,000 of them have sold so far, marked by the shiny promo shot above.

Bar a few shots under the skin of the new SkyActiv chassis and transmission, we're still not sure what the new car will look like. We've only got an ace but completely unofficial rendering and the words of Mazda's Chief Designer Peter Birtwhistle to go on. ‘I think it will be a surprise for people', reckons Birtwhistle. ‘It's a tight, edgy little car that is going to appeal to a broader range of people.'

So what do we know? Its SkyActiv technology will make the new MX-5 100kg lighter than the car it replaces, the entry-level model set to tip the scales south of 1,050kg. This in turn allows downsizing in the engine department, a 1.5-litre engine with around 130bhp likely kicking off the range, with a 165bhp 2-litre engine above it. While prices haven't officially been announced yet, the MX-5 has cornered the circa-£20k roadster market, so don't expect any wild increases in price. Especially with the Toyota GT86 and Subaru BRZ to undercut.

There have been some rather exciting rumours of a joint venture between Mazda and Fiat, with an Abarth roadster spun off the MX-5 appearing further down the line, with a ‘speciality' Fiat due at the end of 2015. We can't wait to find out for certain.

It seems then that the original MX-5 recipe hasn't been changed much; it's just been spiced up a little with fresher ingredients. While this might not quite explain the massive marketing campaign, we're still interested to see what Mazda's new MX-5 has in store. What are you hoping to see when it's revealed tomorrow?

Meet the Land Rover Discovery Sport

Meet the Land Rover Discovery Sport. It's basically the new Freelander - a car that's been around some 17 years, spanning two generations - and justifies its new name with a handful of clever tricks.

For one, it contains no fewer than seven seats within its 459cm length. That's a package just 19cm longer than the five-seat Freelander and 4cm shorter than the five-seat Audi Q5. Alright, they're fold-out rather than full-size efforts, but adults should be able to squeeze into them for short journeys. 

Finding space for the extra seats wasn't the work of a moment, with the Freelander's MacPherson strut suspension replaced with a more compact multi-link set-up that fits beneath the boot floor, while the engines are mounted transversely rather than longitudinally (like they are in the Q5), enabling front seats to be further forward in the wheelbase.

As well as its generous seating, the new car is set to live up to the Discovery half of its name with some genuine off-road ability. The Discovery Sport can wade through 600mm of water and haul its way up one-in-one slopes.

But what about the Sport tag? That new rear suspension set-up is claimed to boost on-road composure, while the front-end construction comes from the ubiquitous Range Rover Evoque . The Evoque's four-wheel-drive system - a Haldex centre coupling linking front and rear axles - is transferred across too, as is its 2.2-litre SD4 187bhp turbodiesel engine.

The Discovery Sport will gain further options in the form of a 150bhp eD4 diesel, which will power a front-wheel-drive model, while Jaguar Land Rover's new family of four-cylinder petrol and diesel engines (rather irritatingly named ‘Ingenium') lie further down the line, with a plug-in hybrid in the plan. Gearbox options comprise a traditional six-speed manual or ZF's nine-speed automatic, so impressive in its current applications, Evoque included.

While the Sport usurps the Freelander, the full-sized Discovery will itself get a replacement, growing in the process to provide some breathing space above this new car. Both will get a gamut of new technology, highlights including a pair of forward-facing stereoscopic cameras that scan the road ahead, prompting (among other functions) an automatic emergency stop if the system decides you won't hit the brakes in time to avoid a crash. There's also an airbag fitted under the bonnet - a Land Rover first - that will fire within 60 milliseconds of a front impact to reduce pedestrian injuries.

The Discovery Sport launches in January 2015, with the SD4 model starting at £32,395 - around ten per cent more than an equivalent (albeit five-seat) Freelander. When the front-drive eD4 launches later next year, it will dip below £30,000 and will fly to the top of company car lists with 119g/km CO2 emissions.

We've not touched on the styling yet, which bears more than a passing resemblance to the Discovery Vision Concept from earlier in the year. Funny that. But looks are, of course, a subjective thing. So tell us what you think below. Are you sad to see the Freelander go?

Corvette sinkhole to be filled!

Yes, it's true. Nearly seven months after a giant sinkhole swallowed eight cars at the National Corvette Museum in the United States, a plan to fill the hole in and fix the damaged cars has been finalised.

In the first months following the collapse, museum directors had originally intended to keep a part of the sinkhole open and unfilled for posterity, after the realisation that more people were coming to look at a massive hole than some old Corvettes. But it wasn't to be.  

‘We really wanted to preserve a portion of the hole so that guests for years to come could see a little bit of what it was like, but after receiving more detailed pricing, the cost outweighs the benefit', said museum director Wendell Strode.

Even a tiny portion of the hole open would have required the construction of a vast array of safety precautions, make it cheaper to fill in the hole than keep even a sliver of it open. One million dollars cheaper, in fact.

Happily, of the eight cars that were swallowed on that fateful February, three will be restored. A 2009 ZR1 prototype, known as the Blue Devil, and the one millionth Corvette ever produced, a white 1992 convertible, will be restored at the museum. A 1962 Corvette will be restored off site.

With $250,000 financial backing from General Motors, Corvette had originally intended to restore all eight of the damaged cars itself. However an ‘outpouring' of requests from visitors and fans has seen five of the cars kept in their damaged condition to record the significance of the event. They will be incorporated into a future exhibition that will commemorate the sinkhole.

And so one of the most unusual sagas in motoring this year almost reaches its finale. Anyone out there been to visit the Corvette hole? 

Picture: National Corvette Museum