Marv’s Garage: The 400km/h Audi TT.

Way back in 2002 German tuners MTM were busy pushing hot-up parts for Volkswagens and Audis, but they wanted a marketing vehicle that could get them some press. While the Audi TT was considered as hard as a piece of wet spaghetti in most markets, MTM saw the potential of the 1.8-litre turbo four-cylinder beast, especially once they jammed a whole second engine set-up in the small sports coupe.

Personally, I can’t fault their logic. Rather than trying to fight all the packaging nightmares of trying to swap a larger, far more powerful engine into the tiny little Audi, Roland Mayer and his MTM crew chose to simply add an extra drivetrain behind the seats and not only double their horsepower but sort out traction issues and chassis balance issues on one simple stroke. They called it the Bimoto because, well, I don’t have to explain that one, do I?

With a pair of turbo four-pots each making 370hp worth of steam the little yellow roller skate was easily capable of pushing through 200mph, and continual development of MTM’s power packs for turbo VW-Audi engines saw power rise to 400hp each, and then 500hp each in 2007. With 1000hp 0n board it pushed the TT to over 393km/h, or 244mph. The genius is that neither engine needed to be completely off its head to attain that, though there is plenty of aerodynamic science to prevent the rotund sports coupe from taking flight, and for synching the two independent powerplants and transmissions so it doesn’t all end up like John Cooper’s infamous twin-engined Mini that nearly cost him his life when he crashed it in 1963.

While I love today’s world of RS3 Audis that only need a flash-tune to run a 10-second time at the drags, and when 1000hp can be pulled out of near-stock motors, I do pine for a time when tuning companies would build insane prototype cars like the MTM Bimoto. It wasn’t until the Bimoto turned up and spanked Pagani Zondas and Ferrari Enzos in top speed events that people thought of Audi TTs as a potential tuner vehicle, arguably paving the way for the TT-S and TT-RS that followed later on.