Living in the Netherlands (A small kingdom, west of Germany) a trip to the German city Koblenz (home of Wetterauer) is not a far trip, especially from a American point of view. A routeplanner calculated 4 hours and eleven minutes, but, since there are several highways in Germany which have no speedlimit, you can easily shorten the trip.

Earlier this year, I bought the showroom model TT from my dealer. It's one of the first produced TTs. The car also went to Gyor, Hungary, for the application of the modified suspension and spoiler and the mounting of the ESP as well.

I found it nescesary to apply the modifications first before any tuning would be done to the car. After all, is it a front wheel driven car, and the standard 180hp already causes torque in the steering wheel at low gears (first and second).

I choose Wetterauer for a couple of reasons:

1. The chip is especially designed for more torque, not just only to increase hp

2. You can buy an extra warranty insurance for 100.000km/6 months for any used car that is tuned by Wetterauer, which confirms their self-confidence

3. You can come to Wetterauer's workshop to let them do all the labour, so you don't have to worry of accidently destroying the chip or motherboard.

I booked a hotel near Koblenz for a few days, so that I could test drive the TT after the tuning. the region has a lot of hills and no-speedlimit highways. So, excellent driving grounds!

At Koblenz, the work on my TT was done by one of the three programmers who design the Wetterauer chips. It was very interesting to see how the job was done. First, the heart of the car was removed from the car. this is the metal box which contains a small circuitboard with two soldered chips - one for the engine and one for all other electric appliances.

The programmer invited me to follow him to his office, where I met the two other programmers. In a separate room, which was the electronics workshop, he showed me how he surgeically removed the soldered engine chip from the board, after which he carefully cleaned the board and chip. The next thing he did, was mounting a socket holder on the spot where the original chip was seated. The original chip was then soldered to a socket, so that is could easily replace the Wetterauer chip if nescesary.

Then, after verifying the software version of the Bosch engine management system of the car, a new socket-ready chip was placed in an EEPROM programming machine and the Wetterauer software for the TT was downloaded to the new chip. After writing down the release and version numbers on the chip, the new chip was placed in the socket holder on the board. A quick test to verify that all 50 pins of the holder were (manually!) soldered correctly was performed, after which the metal box was sealed again and placed back in the car.

The result: awesome power increase, and enormeous torque increase. The engine delivers 210 hp and the maximum torques of 290nm is reached at 3150 rpm.

The cars handles smoothly, no agressive power increase at a specific rpm at all. The torque is very strong at low rpm's as well, so you can drive your car without switching gears often. The top speed is increased as well: 236 km/h (European versions of the TT have no electronic speed limit). the acceleration is the same as the 225 hp quattro version of the TT: 0 - 100 in 6.7 seconds. Why is that: the torque of the tuned TT exceeds that of the standard 225 hp version by 10nm!

The car drives even more fantastic than it originally did! If passing a car with your standard TT brings a smile on your face, the Wetterauer TT will make you laugh.

A warning is at its place, though: Don't go further than chiptuning your FWD TT. To bring all this power on the road, you only have two wheels to do that for you, and you must steer them as well! Strong torque is felt on your steering wheel if you maximally accelerate in your second gear. In third and above you hands can relaxe on the steer. In first, ESP will take over, because the increased power causes the frontwheels to spin very fast.

Furthermore: If you have a 1998 or 1999 model of the TT, apply the by Audi suggested modifications first, before you do ANY tuning at all. I noticed a far more better roadholding with the new suspension and the spoiler. At maximum speed (236km/h) I drove into a left curve at the German highway while driving on the left lane. The car didn't even drift a little. When I released the throttle in the curve, no oversteer occurred! When I put the pedal back onto the metal in that same curve, understeer stayed away also! Magnificent job done by the Audi technicians!

Why settle for less power if your engine can serve you even better? Go and chip your TT!