Audi Confirms Its New Electric Sports Car for 2027 — And It Won’t Be Called TT or R8

Audi has confirmed that its Concept C, the all-electric two-seat sports car it unveiled in Milan in September 2025, is heading into production in 2027 — and CEO Gernot Döllner has ruled out borrowing either of the brand’s two most storied sports-car names to sell it. “It’s not a successor to the TT, it will not have the TT name,” Döllner has said, adding that the team ran out of time to settle on a proper name during development and simply kept the working title, Concept C, for the show car.

That the car is heading to production at all is the real news. Audi has described it as “a concrete preview of a production vehicle” rather than a far-off design study, and the production model is set to be built at the Böllinger Höfe plant, the same small-series factory in Neckarsulm that hand-built both generations of the R8 between 2006 and 2024. After the R8 wound down with no direct replacement, that was read by many as Audi quietly stepping back from building a genuine sports car. Concept C is Audi saying otherwise.

What the Production Car Looks Like

The design borrows its vertical front-end stance from the 1936 Auto Union Type C and the third-generation A6, and its roof is the car’s signature idea, an electrically retractable targa-style top that gives the open-air feel of a convertible while keeping the closed car’s near-monolithic silhouette. Audi says a prototype has already been road-approved, which is further than most concepts get.

Inside, the direction is a deliberate correction. After years of touch-heavy Audi cabins drawing criticism, Concept C leans back toward physical switchgear, with anodised aluminium controls engineered for a crisp, mechanical “Audi click.” The car is confirmed as electric-only, with no combustion option and no plans for extra body styles, and it is expected to share its PPE Sport underpinnings with Porsche’s next-generation 718 Boxster and Cayman, a platform-sharing arrangement Audi’s leadership has said is “not in doubt” despite Porsche’s own well-publicised cutbacks elsewhere.

What It Means for Dubai Buyers

Audi has never carried the showroom pull in Dubai that Ferrari, Lamborghini or Rolls-Royce do, but the R8 built a genuinely loyal following here for a specific reason — it was the supercar people were willing to actually drive every day, in Gulf heat and Gulf traffic, without the fragility or the drama. A production Concept C that sits between the old TT and R8, built at the same plant, with serious Porsche-shared performance underpinnings, is Audi trying to re-open that exact space at a moment when GCC buyers are far more comfortable putting a six-figure performance EV in the garage than they were even two or three years ago.

It also puts a number on something we’re already seeing on the sourcing side at House of Cars Dubai — as the next generation of halo EVs from Audi, Porsche and others gets closer to showrooms, the last combustion-era sports cars from these same model lines, the final R8s among them, are moving from “used supercar” into “collector car” territory in buyers’ minds, often faster than the depreciation curve would suggest. That shift changes what a well-kept, low-mileage example is actually worth, and it is exactly the kind of timing question we help clients on both sides of a deal think through, whether they are buying, selling, or asking us to source a specific car from across Dubai and the wider GCC.

Nothing about Concept C’s eventual name, pricing, or exact Gulf-market timeline is official yet, and Audi has so far only confirmed the 2027 production start. But for a brand that many assumed had quietly given up on building a real sports car, that confirmation alone is the story.