The TT as we’ve known it is now a memory – the one that might be next is an exciting thought for Audi NZ.

LAST chance to see has already gone – but, assuredly, if the TT returns in the form it is predicted to adopt, as an electric car, the local distributor will be interested.

This today as Audi New Zealand has confirmed it has bypassed opportunity to resume selling the TT, preferring instead to focus on the new-generation RSQ3 models set to release imminently in Sportback and continued hatchback formats. 

General manager Dean Sheed says it was a tough call to determine to keep the car that when released originally in 1998, was a global styling bombshell.

But fact is that TT volume was down to a trickle when the car was withdrawn from global production last year, a victim of Volkswagen Group having been defeated in its bid to get all its products homologated in time to meet a rigorous World new Worldwide Harmonised Light Vehicle Test Procedure emissions deadline.

Withdrawing certain models was the only option; cars lacking WLTP compliance could not be sold anyway (in Europe at least) and the maker would have faced hefty fines as well.

That issue has now been resolved for the TT, which has been reissued in a smartened format, headed again by a sharp-looking RS flagship, that in all likelihood will present as the final run for the car in a fossil-fuelled format.

And then? Well, it’s really not shock-horror news any more that there’s supposedly a new TT on the drawing board set to be energised in a totally different, future-ready way.

Audi – and the wider car world of course – is going all-in on electric. And future E-tron models won’t restrict to the sports utility range we presently see. 

Talk about the successor to the TT we have now being re-energised into a fully electric sports weapon for its fourth-generation dates back to May of 2019, when then Audi boss Bram Schot announced that “in a few years, we will replace the TT with a new emotive model in the same price range … with an electric car.”

Just recently, a new report claims the car will ride on the Volkswagen Group’s MEB platform that debuted last year with the ID.3. The final shape is still under wraps and there’s even been talk that it could re-emerge in an SUV-ish format rather than as it is now.

Sheed was cautious when asked if he knew anything about the e-TT, saying: “I haven’t seen the model you refer to, although it’s been talked about in the media.

“You know our customers and we love performance cars (Audi Sport) and electric powertrains, so naturally I would entertain the concept when it was available – the decision will be the same as today, a hot SUV or a hot sportscar, market size and consumer preference.”

The ‘if’ and ‘when’ of an electric TT will doubtless clarify once Audi gives out some signs about how much longer the current car, with its evocative five-cylinder petrol engine, will live. Potentially it’s not for much longer given this generation shape hit the street in 2014.

It’s also prudent to bear in mind that Audi’s grand plan is to sell one million electrified cars each year by the middle of the next decade, which is quite a lot of electrified cars to sell by 2025.

Of course, that ideal was explained prior to coronavirus, so perhaps the delays and financial walloping the illness has inflicted on the global car trade, and national economies, might slow things down a bit. Yet, at the end of the day, the future will inevitably continue to head away from oil because … well, it’s a finite fuel, remember.

In the here and now, you’d have to think the conventionally powered model would be hardly set to leave the scene quietly.

With 294kW and 480Nm, that 2.5-litre five-cylinder turbocharged engine is a forceful involver; a true celebration of the five-pot fury whose family line runs right back to those original Ur Quattro rally scene changers. The new RS is claimed to accomplish 0-100kmh in 3.7 seconds, which makes it half a second faster in that sprint than the (much more expensive) Porsche 718 Cayman GT4.

Potentially, then, knowing that the ‘final fling’ editions aren’t officially coming here might bolster the residual values of previous RS, which held a recommended retail of $149,500. That car became unavailable around mid-2019.