Otto Explains — Brand History
The History of Audi
Short Answer
Audi’s story began with August Horch, who founded his first car company in 1899 and the Audi company in 1909, naming it with the Latin word for “listen”. In 1932 Audi, DKW, Horch and Wanderer merged into Auto Union, whose four rings Audi still carries. After the war the company restarted in Ingolstadt in 1949, passed from Daimler-Benz to Volkswagen, merged with NSU in 1969 and has been called AUDI AG since 1985.
Who was August Horch?
August Horch studied at the Technical Academy in Mittweida in Saxony, worked on engine construction and then ran motor vehicle production at the Carl Benz company in Mannheim. On 14 November 1899 he founded his own company, A. Horch & Cie., in Cologne, and in 1900 he built his first car, the Horch No. 1, which Audi calls the oldest ancestor of today’s Audi models. He moved the business to Reichenbach in Saxony in 1902 and to Zwickau in 1904, when he registered it as a joint-stock company.
Why is the company called Audi?
In 1909, after a dispute with the Executive and Supervisory Boards, Horch left the company that bore his name and founded a new car company in Zwickau. He could not use his own name, which belonged to his former company, so he translated it: the German “Horch” means “listen”, and “Audi” is the same command in Latin. Audi says the idea is said to have come from a business partner’s son who was doing his homework. The first car to carry the Audi name was delivered in May 1910, and Audi today dates its own founding to 1909. August Horch later withdrew from active management and died in 1951 at the age of 83.
Which four companies do the four rings stand for?
Audi, DKW, Horch and Wanderer. Audi had run into financial difficulty and in 1928 was bought by Jörgen Skafte Rasmussen, the owner of DKW. DKW, based in Zschopau, took its name from a steam-car project (Dampfkraftwagen) and was the world’s largest motorcycle maker by 1928. Wanderer, from Chemnitz, had started with bicycles in 1885 and built cars from 1913. On 29 June 1932, on the initiative of the State Bank of Saxony, Audi, DKW, Horch and the car division of Wanderer merged to form Auto Union AG, Germany’s second-largest car group. Each brand kept its own segment: DKW motorcycles and small cars, Wanderer mid-size cars, Audi upper mid-size cars and Horch luxury cars. The emblem of four interlinked rings stood for the four founding companies, and Audi still carries it.
How did Auto Union make its name before the war?
Through racing and sales. Its Grand Prix car, developed with Ferdinand Porsche, raced from May 1934, and Audi recalls its duels with Mercedes-Benz on the circuits of the time. In October 1937 Bernd Rosemeyer became the first person to drive a car on a public road at more than 400 km/h; he was killed during a further record attempt in January 1938. Commercially, one in four passenger cars registered for the first time in Germany in 1938 came from Auto Union, and more than one motorcycle in three was a DKW.
What happened to Auto Union during the Second World War?
Auto Union built its last civilian vehicles in 1940/41 and then produced for the war. Audi states that the company was firmly caught up in the Nazi terror regime: in spring 1945 around 17,300 forced labourers and prisoners of war and 3,700 concentration camp prisoners, among them prisoners from satellite camps of the Flossenbürg concentration camp, were working in the group. After the war the Soviet occupation forces expropriated Auto Union AG and dismantled its production facilities, and in 1948 the company was deleted from the commercial register in Chemnitz.
How did the company start again in Ingolstadt?
Former Auto Union managers who had moved west registered a central depot for spare parts in Ingolstadt on 19 December 1945. Ingolstadt offered a central position in Bavaria and, above all, the empty barracks and storehouses of an old garrison town. On 3 September 1949 Auto Union GmbH was founded there, and Audi regards it as the predecessor of today’s AUDI AG; it began with DKW vans and motorcycles with two-stroke engines. Car production restarted in a former factory in Düsseldorf in August 1950, and a new factory in Ingolstadt, begun in July 1958, built its first car in July 1959.
Who owned Auto Union after the war?
The industrialist Friedrich Flick bought into Auto Union from 1954. In April 1958 Daimler-Benz took over about 88 percent of the shares and the rest in the following year. From the end of 1964 the company passed in stages to Volkswagenwerk AG. The Volkswagen takeover ended the DKW two-stroke engine, and in 1965 Auto Union launched a car called simply Audi, its first post-war model with a four-stroke engine, which brought the Audi name back. Ingolstadt also built Volkswagen Beetles for a time: almost 348,000 between May 1965 and July 1969.
How did Audi become a separate company within Volkswagen?
Through one car and one merger. Volkswagen had barred Auto Union from developing its own models, but Ludwig Kraus, its head of development, had the Audi 100 developed in secret. Presented in November 1968, it was the first model not based on DKW technology, and its success kept the company independent within the Volkswagen Group. In 1969 Auto Union merged with NSU of Neckarsulm, which had built the world’s first production car with a Wankel rotary engine, to form Audi NSU Auto Union AG. The slogan “Vorsprung durch Technik” followed in 1971, and on 1 January 1985 the company became AUDI AG and moved its head office from Neckarsulm to Ingolstadt.
How did Audi move into the premium class?
Step by step. Under Ferdinand Piëch as head of development, Audi set out to build technically innovative cars and moved the brand up the market, with landmarks such as the five-cylinder turbo engine, the fully galvanised body, lightweight construction and quattro permanent all-wheel drive, unveiled in the Audi quattro at the Geneva Motor Show in March 1980. World rally titles followed from 1982. Around the 1985 renaming, sales responsibility moved from Volkswagen to Audi, the TDI direct-injection diesel arrived in 1989, and in 1994 the A8, with its aluminium body, took Audi into the luxury class and introduced a new system of model names. In 1993 Audi Hungaria opened an engine plant in Győr in Hungary.
What was the diesel issue at Audi?
On 18 September 2015 the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced irregularities in nitrogen oxide emissions from Volkswagen Group diesel engines. The four-cylinder TDI engines concerned had been developed by Volkswagen, and Audi reported that about 2.4 million Audi vehicles worldwide had them. On 2 November 2015 the EPA raised similar allegations about the V6 3.0 TDI, a diesel engine developed by Audi: they concerned about 113,000 Audi, Volkswagen and Porsche vehicles of model years 2009 to 2016 in the United States and Canada, whose sales there were suspended, and the American complaint that followed attributed this engine to AUDI AG. Otto states here only what Audi reported at the time; later settlements are not covered.
Where does Audi stand today?
AUDI AG belongs to Volkswagen AG. The Audi Group comprises Audi, Bentley, Lamborghini, Ducati and Audi Sport GmbH, the former quattro GmbH founded in 1983, and AUDI AG employs about 88,000 people worldwide. Audi says it began its electric era in 2018 with the e-tron, and in 2024 it started production on the Premium Platform Electric (PPE), developed with Porsche, with the Q6 e-tron, its first fully electric model built in Ingolstadt. In motorsport, after 13 Le Mans victories between 2000 and 2014 and a Dakar Rally win in January 2024, Audi entered Formula 1 with its own works team in March 2026.
Common Questions
- How old is the Audi brand? Audi dates its founding to 1909, when August Horch set up his second company in Zwickau, and the first Audi car was delivered in May 1910. Horch’s first company, A. Horch & Cie., dates from 1899.
- Why does Audi have four rings? The rings stand for the four companies that merged to form Auto Union in 1932: Audi, DKW, Horch and Wanderer.
- Did Daimler-Benz ever own Audi? Yes. Daimler-Benz took over about 88 percent of Auto Union in April 1958 and the rest the following year; from the end of 1964 the company passed to Volkswagen.
- Does Volkswagen own Audi? Yes. AUDI AG is part of Volkswagen AG, and together with Bentley, Lamborghini and Ducati, Audi forms the group’s Progressive Brand Group.