Audi TT RS Long Term test – Ingolstadt's five-cylinder sports car reveals its first flaw

Admittedly, six months with one of the most pliant-riding performance cars on sale, an Alpine A110, is perhaps not the best preparation for the Audi way of doing suspension, especially when that Audi is a TT RS.

I had wondered if, with time and miles, I might become more accustomed to our TT’s firmness, but no. It remains dominant on every journey, even with the magnetic-ride dampers left almost permanently in their Comfort setting. So urban streets frequently become impromptu slaloms in a bid to avoid the uncomfortable judder of slightly sunken manhole covers and lumpy repair patches. Out on more open roads, meanwhile, you quickly learn to pay extra heed to ‘bumpy road’ warning signs and those telltale short skid marks that tattoo troublesome imperfections.

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Fail to do so and, well, let’s just say I’ve never got so much air in a long-termer as I did during my first couple of weeks with the TT RS. Sometimes it felt entirely undeserved, too. One minor transverse ridge on a route I use frequently sent the Audi’s back end bucking in the air (a 61:39 front-to-rear weight distribution means the rear is particularly prone to getting airborne) before it came thudding back down, accompanied by a clatter from the contents of the boot and an exclamation from the passenger seat. Yet the other cars we were flowing along with at 50-something mph seemed completely unfazed by the tarmac’s topography.

Other times, however, the potential for momentary flight can occur because you’re travelling faster than you realise. When the surface is favourable, the RS seems to settle at a speed some 20‑30mph faster than might generally be advisable, so well does it disguise its pace. At which point those minor humps can become more like take-off ramps.

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All of this means you rarely truly relax with the TT RS when travelling cross-country, which could be seen as a positive. At least it doesn’t fall into that trap that catches so many other MQB-platform VW Group cars, which can feel so capable they actually become dull. Maybe they all just need nearly 400bhp to inject some excitement into them…

Naturally, our TT has a few extras. It’s in top-level Vorsprung spec, which added £10,000 exactly when it was new and brings 20-inch wheels (up from the standard 19s), Magnetic Ride, an RS Sports Exhaust system, Matrix LED headlights and a black styling pack. Also options are the Tango Red Metallic paint (£575), red brake calipers (£345) and an extended RS styling pack (£1125), which brings red outer side panels on the seats, red trim on the transmission tunnel, red rings in the air vents and red stripes on the seat belts. The grand total? £71,495.

Speaking of which, the TT’s five-cylinder engine is now run-in and, as anticipated, delivering some ferocious levels of acceleration. At first I found the accompanying soundtrack strangely unmoving, though – until I discovered why. I’ve got the sports exhaust set to ‘Dynamic’ in my configuration for the car’s Individual mode, which I use almost exclusively and which remains selected when the engine is restarted. Except… the exhaust’s noisier setting isn’t engaged under these circumstances. No doubt this is an emissions thing.

So after prodding the start button, a push of the exhaust button is also required to rouse the best sounds from the engine: a bit more bass, a richer note, that characteristic warble brought to the fore and no unnecessary fireworks. Sorted.