The Audi history begins with a man called August Horch, who founded the Company HORCH & CO in 1899.He invented his first car 1901 with the help of 15 fellow workers. The car had a max. speed of 32 km/h. In 1909 Mr. Horch had to leave his company due to major problems with the commercial management and founded another company called Audi.
” Audi” is the Latin translation for “Horch” and he took that name because he wanted to build cars under his own name. So the brand “AUDI Automobilwerke GmbH” was registraded in 1910. Until the First World War some of the cars built under the Audi name won several rallies, which helped to establish the name worldwide. During the first war Audi was forced to produce vehicles for the war effort, and then after the war the recession was also a tremendous problem for the company. Therefore the founder August Horch left the management in 1920. The company managed to get through the hard times from 1927 to 1930, but in 1931 the management recognized that only a union with other vehicle manufacturer could keep Audi alive. At that time the AUTO UNION was founded, the members were DKW, HORCH, WANDERER and AUDI. The new companies insignia to show the union of the four companies was the now familiar 4 rings , which are still used by Audi today.
The new union had great success in motor sport in the ensuing years. The most powerful car that was build before the 2nd world war was a 6 litre V 16 engine with 382 KW( 582PS) in 1936. In the years during the 2nd world war the AUTO UNION once again were forced to build vehicles for German military. Many motorcycles, engines, different war vehicles and even parts for submarines were build until 1945. At that time all factories in Germany were completely destroyed by American bombers.
After the war had ended there were about 60 000 DKW military vehicles worldwide that needed spare parts and maintaince. This was the reason a new start in Ingolstadt, southern Germany was made. Soon after the war there were again many cars produced, the most important for me was the DKW Munga, a four-wheel jeep with 3-cylinder 2-stroke engine. Invented in 1956 for the German military, there were only 250 cars produced for testing purposes. On of these cars made a trip around the world and drove over 240 000 km without major problems. This was the beginning of the later concept called Quattro. Nearly 57 000 Mungaswere built until 1968.
The modern era of Audi
The first Audi of the modern era was the Audi 100 of 1968. This was soon joined by a derivative of the Volkswagen Passat , the Audi 80 in 1972. The image of Audi cars was perceived as conservative, so a proposal was accepted from their chassis engineer Jorg Bensinger to develop the four-wheel drive technology in Volkswagen ’s Iltis military vehicle for an Audi performance car and for a rally car.
Audi S460 Minutes ignored this fact and rigged a car to perform in an uncontrolled manner. The report immediately crushed Audi sales, and Audi renamed the affected model (The 5000 became the 100/200 in 1989, as in Germany and elsewhere). Audi had contemplated withdrawing from the American market until sales began to recover in the mid-1990s. The turning point for Audi was the sale of the new A4 in 1996, and with the release of the A4/6/8 series, which was developed together with VW and other sister brands (so called “platforms”), Audi has regained what was lost due to biased journalism. Currently, Audi’s sales are growing strongly in Europe, and the company is renowned for having the best build quality of any mainstream auto manufacturer.
2004 marked the 11th straight increase in sales, selling 779,441 vehicles worldwide. Record figures were recorded from 21 out of about 50 major sales markets. The largest sales increases came from Eastern Europe (+19.3%), Africa (+17.2%) and the Middle East (+58.5%). In March of 2005, Audi is building its first two dealerships in India following its high increase in sales in that region. Though its brand still doesn’t have the global cachet of Mercedes-Benz or BMW , Audi’s reputation for quality and understated style has once again made it a highly desirable marque.
