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.
