Audi TT Ultra Quattro Concept: Images and Features

Audi builds an awesome lightweight 2449 pound lightweight Ultra TT Quattro Concept.

Audi managed to lighten the standard TT by a whopping 661 pounds. That is a heck of a lot of weight to shave and Audi did it in impressive fashion. Extensive use of carbon fiber, fiber-reinforced plastic, and magnesium helps Audi shave a lot of weight including 220 pounds from the body alone.


Carbon ceramic brakes also help shave weight and the wheels shave 44 pounds. They are made out of carbon fiber reinforced plastic with aluminum spokes, impressive and super lightweight. The floor is made out of magnesium and magnesium is used in fasteners and hinges. Carbon fiber reinforced plastic makes up the roof, transmission tunnel, rear end pieces, and B-Pillars. Lightweight seats also shed weight from their production components.

It starts underneath: there's a 2.0-litre turbo producing 305bhp, with modifications to the crankshaft, balancer shafts, flywheel, sump, bolts and ancillaries to shift 25kg.

Next, the body structure of the TT Ultra has had another 43kg removed, while use of carbon-fibre reinforced polymer (CFRP) in the rear end, centre tunnel, B-pillars and roof helps achieve an overall 100kg saving. The brakes are ceramic - with aluminium calipers - there's a titanium exhaust system with a single tailpipe, and CFRP wheels with aluminium spokes that shed a further 20kg.

The steel in the coil springs has been replaced with fiberglass-reinforced polymer, using science and technology that sits outside TopGear's usual remit of Fix It With A Hammer (long glass fibres are twisted together, ‘impregnated' with epoxy resin, with additional fibres wrapped around the core at alternating angles). Overall, you're talking a 40 per cent weight reduction.

Then there's the small matter of jiggling the remaining weight around to keep the distribution in a place aforementioned auto enthusiasts will enjoy (ie, the middle). The lithium-ion battery weighs just 4kg and sits under the driver's seat.

Speaking of the seats, the TT Ultra gets the same FRP buckets used in the R8 GT (that save 22kg), the rear bench has been binned in favour of a cross-brace, and there are CFRP elements in the roof, flanks and tailgate, as well as the inside trim.

All this weight reduction however, must have been painful, so, the engineers were allowed to indulge their concept sides a touch by fitting a ruddy big wing. Yet even this is made from a combination of milled aluminium and carbon fibre.

So there we have it - Audi adhering to Colin Chapman's oft-quoted maxim of ‘adding lightness'. It's roughly the same weight as a diesel Fiesta, for crying out loud. Reckon Audi should have just bunged in the V10 from the R8 and slapped on a new sticker instead, or do you like this Slim Fast philosophy?