The long version

Audi never offered the TT RS with a manual gearbox in the US, which quietly kept it off cross-shopping lists next to the Golf R and Civic Type R despite sharing most of its underpinnings with both, but the turbocharged five-cylinder's off-beat exhaust note is a genuine point of difference nothing else at this price replicates. Quattro all-wheel drive and the dual-clutch gearbox make it easy to drive daily in weather that would sideline a rear-drive coupe, and that practicality shows in how these get used: commuted, toured, occasionally tracked, rarely garaged for its own sake. Values have settled into ordinary German-coupe depreciation rather than anything resembling a speculative curve.