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Audi is today one of the world's largest and most successful premium car makers, but it might never have happened.
With 1.8 million vehicles sold in 2018, it’s difficult to imagine a world without Audi now, but it’s only through a series of unusual events that the company didn’t disappear 80 years ago, to be remembered by nobody other than scholars of German industrial history. And then, later, the company became a feared rival to BMW and Mercedes-Benz under the leadership of the later Volkswagen mogul Ferdinand Piëch, who died just a few days ago. This is the story:
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The founder: August Horch
The story began 120 years ago, before Audi had even been thought of, when August Horch created a company under his own name in Cologne in November 1899. Its first car was built in 1901, and Horch relocated (very significantly, as it would turn out) to Zwickau in eastern Germany three years later.
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Early Horch cars
Horch would later build what we might now describe as premium models, though that concept was unknown in 1901. The first Horch was an open four-seater with a two-cylinder engine producing slightly less than 5bhp. Within just a few years the company was building six-cylinder cars.
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Horch creates Audi
By 1909, August Horch’s views were so much at variance with those of the board of directors that he was obliged to leave his own company. He soon created another one, which he named Audi. Horch and audi are respectively the German and Latin words for “listen!” or “hark!”
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Audi production begins
The very first Audi was the unimaginatively named Type A of 1910. It was followed almost immediately by the very similar Type B, which used the same 2.6-litre four-cylinder engine. August Horch left Audi in 1920 to pursue other interests, but the company continued to operate successfully for the next few years.
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Neighbouring manufacturers
Audi and Horch were both based in Zwickau. Chemnitz, a few miles to the east, was the home of Wanderer, which began building cars in 1911 and quickly developed a reputation as a luxury brand. It had no connection with the other two companies at this point, but that would soon change.
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The fourth Saxon
Zwickau and Chemnitz are both in the state of Saxony. So is Zschopau, where expatriate Dane Jörgen Skafte Rasmussen set up in business after completing his engineering studies. His DKW company became dominant in the motorcycle world (pictured), and also built cars which were mostly front-wheel drive and invariably fitted with two-stroke engines.
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Why DKW?
Rasmussen (pictured) used the DKW name several times before applying it to cars. The letters stood variously for Dampf-Kraft-Wagen (prototype steam-powered vehicles), Des Knaben Wunsch (‘the boys’ desire’ – an 18cc toy engine) and Das Kleine Wunder (‘the little wonder’ – an auxiliary engine for bicycles).
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Big company, small cars
DKW cars were very cheap and not to be compared with those built by Audi, Horch or Wanderer. The company was extremely successful, however, and in 1928 Rasmussen, encouraged by the state bank of Saxony, became a majority shareholder in Audi. Despite this new connection, both companies continued to build very different types of car.
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Rescue plan
The German economy was in a terrible state by the early 1930s. In an attempt to prevent the collapse of the Saxon motor industry, the state bank suggested that DKW, already partnered with Audi, should now buy Horch and Wanderer. The Auto Union conglomerate was created in June 1932.
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The four rings
This explains the design of Audi’s four-ring badge. Each ring represents one of the companies incorporated into Auto Union. Although most people now associate it with Audi and nothing else, the badge was not used to signify Audi alone until more than 30 years after it was first used.
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Racing for the Reich
Auto Union is perhaps best remembered for building some of the greatest Grand Prix cars of the 1930s. Adolf Hitler wanted to promote Germany through motorsport with a single team run by Mercedes, but he was persuaded that a second team of Porsche-designed Auto Unions would make things more interesting.
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Fearsome machines
From 1934 to 1937 the Auto Union racers had the alarming combination of enormously powerful mid-mounted V16 engines and swing-axle rear suspension. Former motorcycle racer Bernd Rosemeyer was one of the few drivers who could master them, and became a hero in Germany as a result.
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Continuing domination
Like Mercedes, Auto Union remained in Grand Prix racing after the authorities attempted to slow the cars down in 1938. Non-German manufacturers still couldn’t get close to them. Among other drivers, the new V12 Auto Unions were handled with typical panache by Italian star Tazio Nuvolari.
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Wide range
The Auto Union road cars, still retaining their original brand names though they now shared a badge, bore no resemblance to the racers. They occupied the same market positions as before the merger, Audi being approximately level with Horch, below Wanderer and well above DKW.
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The collapse
Auto Union did not survive the Second World War in its original form. DKW and, much later, Audi would resurface in peacetime, but the end had come for Horch and Wanderer, at least as manufacturers of passenger cars. Their last models were built around 1940.
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The recovery
Since its original base in Chemnitz was now part of Communist East Germany, Auto Union had to be reformed further west in Ingolstadt after the War. Impoverished Germany was no place for premium cars in the late 1940s, so the company initially devoted all its energy to building the little two-stroke DKWs.
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More motorsport success
As it had been before the War, DKW was very successful in motorsport in the 1950s and 1960s. Drivers Walter Schlüter, Gustav Menz and Heinz Meier took the first three places in the 1954 European Rally Championship, and DKW also did well in circuit racing and record breaking.
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Jim Clark
The best-known DKW driver was almost certainly Jim Clark, who was persuaded (against family policy) by his friend Ian Scott-Watson to use Ian’s DKW Sonderklasse in a circuit race at Crimond in Aberdeenshire in June 1956. Clark would win the F1 World Championship in 1963 and 1965.
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DKW losing its way
DKW made the unfortunate decision to abandon motorcycles, believing that the market for them had disappeared. It was later criticised for failing to develop its two-stroke engines. An anonymous engineer wrote that this proved “one can kill a good principle if one allows things to be run by a sufficient number of incompetents”.
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Changes of ownership
Daimler bought DKW in two stages in the late 1950s and resurrected the Auto Union brand, though the cars with that name were still DKWs at heart. In 1964 there was a further change, as Volkswagen bought the Ingolstadt factory and the trademark rights to Auto Union. PICTURE: Auto Union 1000 Sp coupe
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The end of DKW
The last DKW-badged car was the F102. Its replacement was the four-stroke F103. Volkswagen brought back the Audi name which had lain dormant for nearly three decades in an attempt to distance this 1965 model from DKW’s reputation as a maker of the now unpopular two-strokes. PICTURE: Audi Super 90
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Audi returns
Still officially an Auto Union, the F103 was at first known simply as ‘the Audi’. As the range grew, models were sold as Audi 60 (pictured), 72, 75, 80 and 90 according to their power outputs. This naming system was still being used in the 1990s, though for different reasons.
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Introducing NSU
At around this time, yet another German manufacturer became part of the Audi story. NSU had a similar history to DKW, having built motorcycles from 1901 and cars from 1905. The beautiful little NSU Spider (pictured) of 1964 was one of the first production cars ever fitted with a Wankel rotary engine.
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NSU’s last stand
The last model sold by NSU was the Ro80. This brilliant car, launched in 1967, had a rotary engine, front-wheel drive, a semi-automatic gearbox (the clutch was engaged when the driver touched the gearlever) and a remarkably aerodynamic body.
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Killing a company
Although it was named European Car of the Year in 1968, the Ro80 quickly developed a reputation for unreliability. NSU fixed the issues, and continued to build the car for a decade, but neither public support nor the company’s finances ever recovered.
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A new partner
Volkswagen bought troubled NSU in 1969 and merged it with the company it had acquired four years earlier. The resulting entity was called Audi NSU Auto Union. Audi was now the name (at least partly) of a business for the first time since the Second World War.
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Audi stands alone
The end of Ro80 production led to a renaming of the company. What had formerly been Audi NSU Auto Union became known simply as Audi. The numerical naming system still applied but now denoted the size of each model, so an 80 was larger than a 50 (pictured) but smaller than a 100.
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A stable future
Under the energetic leadership of Ferdinand Piëch (who has recently died, aged 82), Audi soon became known for its innovation, introducing turbocharging, four-wheel drive and aerodynamic body shapes long before they became common in the industry. Its business structure, however, was set. Audi was now firmly part of the Volkswagen group, a situation which seems very unlikely to change. PICTURE: Audi Quattro rally car at Pikes Peak
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Conclusion
Looking back, the history of Audi seems perilous. It was created by Horch, saved by DKW and revived by Volkswagen. If any one of these things had not happened, DKW might now be the successful premium band with the four rings and Audi a nearly forgotten one, rather than the other way round.
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