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 ugust Horch (1868-1951) left the Horch company he had founded in June 1909 because he felt that the marque should participate in automobile racing but the rest of the board of directors resented this view. He founded a new company but was unable to register it under his own name. A son of an employee studied Latin in school and suggested the translation of Horch (= listen) into Audi.
Audi Automobil-Werke GmbH operated in Zwickau just like the Horch Motorwagenwerke. A peculiar feature of the Audi logo was the mirror-image of number "6" used as the letter "d" just like today. August Horch left the Audi company in the early 1920's. In 1928 the majority of the shares was bought by a Dane Jørgen Skafte Rasmussen (1878-1964) who had manufactured DKW motorcycles since 1920. He was ready to launch a DKW automobile and needed production capacity for it. Besides, he had secured the manufacturing rights to the American Rickenbacker engines which were suitable for cars of Audi's size. |
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 n the beginning of the 1930's both Audi and DKW showed poor earnings and in the summer of 1932 the financing bank, Sächsische Staatsbank, recommended the formation of Auto-Union AG which in addition to Rasmussen's enterprises included Horch and Wanderer, two companies similarly afflicted.These four companies are symbolized by the four rings joined together featured in the Audi insignia until today.
After the World War II the company manufactured cars under the names DKW and Auto-Union. The Wanderer name was dropped, Horch continued a while in trucks and East German products but Audi was reincarnated in 1965 when the last model of DKW, the F102 was equipped with a four-stroke engine. The company wanted to distance itself from the two-stroke reputation and reasoned that a brand new name was the best way to start the process. Audi was a familiar name with a connotation to the quality cars of the decades past. As an insignia for the new Audi the four rings of the Auto-Union were chosen but this time displayed more prominently on the radiator grille. |
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he model spread offered by DKW, Wanderer and Horch was pricewise quite complete and there was no real need for Audis in this respect. The marque could have died altogether had Auto-Union not given this name in 1933 for a totally new front wheel drive model which used components from other models of the concern. Audi was momentarily dropped from the product line in 1938 until the front wheel drive model was replaced with a new rear wheel drive Audi.