Detroit auto show: Audi’s latest TT concept

We've been here before with Audi. When the current TT was launched it was previewed with a 'shooting brake' style concept version that appended a compact estate bodystyle onto the back of everyone's favourite symmetrically circular coupe. Much faith was put in a production version which then failed to materialise but now Audi is having another go at the idea with this, the Allroad Shooting Brake concept.

Audi will only say that it's a "concrete look into the near future" but it seems that the front end is all but identical to the new TT, due on sale by 2015. Certainly, the concept's interior is the same as the new TT cabin which Audi showed at the recent Consumer Electronics show in Las Vegas, which uses a full TFT screen instead of dials and supplementary displays.

The Allroad Shooting Brake is especially high-tech, but not so much that you couldn’t see much, if indeed not all of its system trickling through to production TTs. The aluminium-and-carbon-fibre body for instance looks to be a riposte to BMW’s recent technological lead in such construction techniques, while the e-Tron plugin hybrid drivetrain seems tantalisingly close to being production ready.

It mixes a 288hp version of the Golf GTI’s 2.0-litre turbo engine with an 8.8 kWh battery. Plug it in to charge and you should get 50km on pure electric power. Combined, the petrol and electric motors pump out a significant 402hp yet Audi is claiming Co2 emissions of just 45g/km and fuel consumption in excess of 120mpg. Although the car uses a version of Audi’s quattro four wheel drive setup, in electric-only mode, it’s actually rear-wheel-drive.

The hybrid system uses three modes - a pure electric EV mode that locks out the engine for as long as possible, a hybrid mode which tries to favour electric power and use the engine as much as possible as a range extender and a Power mode which just turns everything up to 11.

Does this mean that the next-generaton TT RS will be a 400hp range-extender with part carbon-fibre bodywork? Given Audi’s towering ambitions, we wouldn’t count it out, but a shooting brake estate may well still prove elusive.