TT RS

There is one road on the west coast that justifies renting a sports coupé all by itself: the corniche linking Alghero to Bosa, some forty kilometres suspended between Mediterranean scrub and open sea, without a single straight worthy of the name. With its short wheelbase and ground-hugging centre of gravity, the TT RS is the perfect instrument for that ribbon of asphalt — compact where the carriageway narrows above the cliffs, planted where the corner opens onto the blue.

Here the coupé format is no sacrifice but an advantage: two proper seats plus two occasional ones, dimensions that slot into the parking spaces of old Alghero and Stintino, and a silhouette that turns heads even among the boats of Porto Conte. Before setting off, it is worth reading our guide to the requirements for renting a luxury car in Italy: arriving prepared makes the handover quicker still.

The TT RS's 2.5 turbo descends in a straight line from the five-cylinder engines that wrote Audi's rally history, and you can hear it: the timbre is coarse-grained and full, with an off-beat phrasing that no four- or six-cylinder can imitate. Open the exhaust valves and every lift of the throttle becomes a dark grumble ricocheting off the cliffs of the Coral Riviera — and the temptation to drop one more gear just to hear it again is almost irresistible.

The 3.7-second 0–100 km/h sprint arrives entirely without drama: the seven-speed dual-clutch gearbox strings the ratios together in a flash, and quattro all-wheel drive puts everything to the ground even on the dusty asphalt of late summer. The steering is direct, the nose hunts the apex with surgical precision, and you catch yourself retaking the same corner purely for the pleasure of doing it better.

The TT RS belongs to a species now close to extinction: the compact sports coupé, drawn around its mechanicals and the person driving. The cabin is snug, the virtual cockpit gathers every readout behind the steering wheel, and the round air vents carry the climate controls within them — no superfluous screens, no distractions. You climb aboard and understand at once that every element exists for a single purpose.

It is a character that speaks to those who make the north-west coast their base: unhurried on land, intense behind the wheel. If the Coral Riviera is your anchorage, delivery can be arranged in town, at your hotel or at the terminal — details are on our Audi rental in Alghero page, while the full line-up of sporting machinery can be browsed among the sports cars available in Sardinia.