Audi

Audi
The history of the brand goes back to the early days of the automotive industry. In 1899, the brilliant German engineer August Horch founded his first automobile plant and laid the foundation for the future concern. However, 10 years later, due to disagreements with partners, he had to leave the board of his own company. Having borrowed from friends and business partners a huge amount of 200 thousand marks for those times, necessary for a new enterprise, Horch, whose last name means “listen” in translation, painfully thought about the possible name of his new company. And once a schoolboy, the son of one of the engineer’s friends, who was just studying Latin, inclined the verb audire (“listen”) in his presence. The name of the new company, which has become synonymous with the word “Horch”, was coined: Audi – “listen!”

In the next two decades, the “newborn” brand managed to win the recognition of customers. Audi models won prestigious sports competitions, many celebrities of the time drove them, and the luxurious Audi Type R, which debuted in 1928, from a technical point of view, personified the highest level of automotive achievement of that time: an eight-cylinder engine with 100 hp. dispersed the convertible to the then fantastic speed of 110 km / h!

The history of the “four rings” familiar to everyone today began in 1932, when four Saxon car manufacturers – Audi, DKW, Horch and Wanderer – merged to form Auto Union AG. In pre-war Germany, it was the second largest and is considered the predecessor of the current concern Audi AG.

In the seven years before the war, AutoUnion made a rapid breakthrough in all directions: the world’s best luxury convertibles and limousines were produced under the Horch brand, Wanderer made the most beautiful W25K roadster of its time, DKW cars were the first among German vehicles to successfully pass crash tests, on Audi models middle class established front-wheel drive. Finally, the Auto Union sports cars and their drivers in the Gran Prix and record-breaking races were second to none.

In 1938, the working capital of the company grows to a record amount for those times of 238 million marks, the factories employ almost 23 thousand workers, and the market share is 23.4%.

After 1945 and until the mid-60s, the brands of the once strongest concern in Germany, Auto Union, are going through a difficult period of disintegration, change of ownership and moving from one city to another. In 1966, the Volkswagen concern becomes the owner of 100 percent of the shares of Auto Union, and already under the wing of the concern, two years later, the latest development of the brand’s engineers, the Audi 100 model, rolls off the assembly line of the plant in Bavarian Ingolstadt. It allowed the concern to make a real breakthrough in the middle class car segment. The successive models Audi 50, Audi 80 and Audi 100 built on the success, which became a triumph with the debut of the Audi quattro in 1980.

Since 1982, when Audi cars entered the World Rally Championship, they have been unrivaled in many other sports. The Audi quattro all-wheel drive segment has been steadily growing and expanding ever since.

In 1985, Audi AG, headquartered in Ingolstadt, was registered in the German commercial register. The concern is growing year by year. The spirit of sportiness and technological progress is reflected both in the range and in the developments. The brand is rapidly conquering a new premium segment, and in 1994 the first “aluminum” Audi A8 executive sedan enters the market. In the same year, the Audi A6 business-class sedan and wagon, which later became a bestseller, and the Audi A4, which had an incredible success, appeared in the model line.

In subsequent years, not only the model range, but also production volumes are growing rapidly. In 1998, Audi AG becomes the owner of the Italian supercar brand Lamborghini. Thanks to the efforts of German partners, using the latest technical developments and financial capabilities of Audi, the affixed Italian brand is gaining a second wind. The same can be attributed to Ducati motorcycles. This Italian company was bought by Audi AG in 2012, and since then its lineup has been constantly growing and updating.

2016 was marked for the brand by the opening of the first production in the Americas. The plant in San José Chiapa, Puebla, Mexico, is designed to produce 150,000 vehicles per year. Two years later, a factory was opened in the Belgian capital, Brussels, to manufacture the latest family of electric models. Its ancestor was the first mass-produced all-electric crossover Audi e-tron, which went on sale in 2019. A year later, the brand introduced five new electric vehicles to the world, including the uncompromising 440 kW Audi RS e-tron GT, which is assembled at Audi Sport GmBH in Heilbronn.