Idle Hands: Audi TT

It was your typical slightly questionable independent dealership. You know the sort. Established on an old petrol station forecourt, with tall ugly security fences around it, tatty hoardings, and a slew of semi-derelict buildings and cars.

None of the stock looked like it had turned a wheel in weeks, some perhaps longer. The kind of place where the dealer’s interest in selling you a car appears inversely proportional to your interest in it. And, just visible from the road, the car I’d spotted in the classifieds: a first-generation Audi TT. I didn’t have high hopes but, well, nothing ventured…

The car wasn’t just a cooking front-drive variant though, or merely one of the conventional and more popular quattro models. It was, and why it had caught my eye, the rare 237bhp quattro Sport, the high-performance final flourish of the initial iteration of Audi’s sports car. Somewhat predictably though, on closer inspection it didn’t look a viable option. It was covered in grime, with moss creeping along every horizontal surface, and the brakes looked like they’d been lifted from the Titanic. As a final kick in the shins, two tyres were as flat as the Fens.