Get Autoblog in your Google feed
Audi’s second U.S. market aluminum car, after the A8 (the Euro-only A2 is also made from the 13th element), the new
TT will see production sometime in 2007. Audi is going with the metal not because of rising steel prices, since
aluminum still costs more than steel anyway, but rather for its value in terms of weight savings and rigidity. The use
of aluminum reduces a small car’s body structure weight by 42 percent, and the less a car weighs, the easier it is to
make it handle well and accelerate like the dickens. In response to the announcement, Mercedes has pledged itself to a
future of vehicles constructed solely from rusty old tin cans.