There is of course one car that should not be missing from the Audi TT's gallery of ancestors: the show car from 1995. Audi presented the concept car at the IAA in Frankfurt in September of that year. And voices were immediately raised at the time: "Bring this car into series production - but exactly like this, please!" The decision was made at the end of 1995: The Audi TT Coupé would be built, and in 1998 the time had come. Torsten Wenzel, Exterior Designer at Audi, helped bring the study to series production and remembers: "For us, it was the greatest praise when the trade press noted appreciatively that not much had changed from the study to series production, although due to the technical specifications for the series version, we did of course have to adapt many details - including the proportions." For Wenzel, who also owns a first-generation TT in his private life, the TT remains "a driving sculpture, the highest quality in surfaces and lines" to this day.
With the Audi TT comes something new with a traditional name
The Ingolstadt-based company deliberately deviated from the usual Audi nomenclature with the name of the new sports car: the model designation "TT" is a reminiscence of the legendary Tourist Trophy on the Isle of Man, one of the oldest and most spectacular motorsport events in the world, in which NSU and DKW celebrated great success with their motorcycles. With the NSU TT, the Neckarsulm-based carmaker established a link to the brand's motorsport successes on the rugged island back in the 1960s - the brand with the four rings has taken up this double reference again in the naming of the Audi TT. Curator Stefan Felber: "We are also showing some special models from this part of TT history in our summer exhibition," for example the NSU Rennfox from 1954, the winning motorcycle from the TT Ulster, which gave its name to the later NSU models Quickly TT and NSU Prinz TT - and thus ultimately also to the revolutionary and brand-defining Audi TT.
State of the ArTT - 25 years of the Audi TT
July 24 to September 24 at Audi museum mobile; booking and ticket prices online
In addition to exhibits relating to the history of the "TT" name, the summer exhibition on the history of the Audi TT also features a series of studies and coupé models from all three generations, such as the Audi TT quattro sport from 2005, the Audi TTS Pikes Peak "Shelly" from 2009, the Audi TT ultra quattro concept from 2013 and the Audi TT Cup winner from 2017.
