100 years of Audi - Audi Club of North America

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100 Years
E U R O P O I N T
of
by Elaine Catton
I’m not very good with birthdays; I even forgot my husband’s once
— that didn’t go down well. However, it has been difficult to avoid
noticing that 2009 marks an important milestone for Audi —
its centenary, no less.
IT STRUCK ME, THEREFORE, THAT THIS
might be a good time to brush up on some
Audi history. While Audi’s market position
in the U.S. may sometimes seem like one of
a niche player, it does no harm to remember
that the company has its roots in the very
dawning age of the automobile.
When Carl Benz first unleashed his Benz
Patent-Motorwagen on an unsuspecting
world, an 18-year old boy from the German
town of Winningen was busy following in
his father’s footsteps as a blacksmith. In
the wave of enthusiasm for engineering
that was rife at the time, the young August
Horch shifted his attention away from the
forge and onto mechanical engineering.
By 1896, the 28 year-old had joined
Carl Benz in Mannheim to work initially in
Engine Manufacturing before going on to
head up Motor Vehicle Construction.
Whenever I read through tales of how
the automobile first sputtered to life, I
wonder if any of these engineering pioneers
were also possessed of the social intellect
and foresight to appreciate what it was
they were starting back then. Or were they
too wrapped up in the innovative roller
coaster to spend any time musing over the
socio-political impact of this new-fangled
contraption?
By all accounts, August Horch fell more
into the category of visionary thinker
and manager than of technical inventor.
While Carl Benz jealously held onto full
developmental control of his motor car,
Horch was thinking farther ahead and
envisioning great things for expanding the
power and scope of the automobile.
The largely unsung hero at the side of
August Horch was the engineer Hermann
Lange, whom Horch met early in his career
in Leipzig. When Horch moved to work with
Carl Benz, he took Lange with him as Senior
Engineer.
Apparently frustrated by his inability to
bring to fruition any of his own ideas, Horch
left Carl Benz to set up his own operation
in 1899 — taking Hermann Lange with
him. Originally established in the town of
Ehrenfeld near Cologne, A. Horch & Cie
later moved to Reichenbach, before finally
settling in the Saxon town of Zwickau in
1904. Clearly, moving a car factory was an
easier task in those days.
Anyone who has ever seen a vehicle built
by August Horch is well aware that they are
imposing and luxurious pieces of machinery
built for discerning and, above all, extremely
wealthy customers. Almost all of the ground
work for this was laid during the ten years
of August Horch’s tenure. Impressed by
the forward thinking of the French, Horch
was the first German manufacturer to put
Audi 10/22 hp (Type A) and Audi 10/28 (Type B) in the Austrian Alpine Run, May 1911
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August Horch in Zwickau
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the engine up front and to separate the
body from the chassis. Some features were
original Horch/Lange inventions, the key
principles of which are still in use to this day.
Horch, for example, was the first to
introduce a transmission with permanently
engaged gears. He also used a friction
clutch in order to avoid shifting the drive
belt from the idler pulley to the driving
gear. However, one of the most significant
contributions made by Horch to automotive
technology was his introduction of the
universal drive shaft.
But all this is preamble to what
then occurred in 1909. August Horch’s
adversarial relationship with commercial
director Jakob Holler finally erupted in
Horch’s departure from the company
bearing his name.
Unperturbed, Horch decided to set up
shop all over again across the road from
his old company. Naming a company
back then was obviously a self-obsessed
exercise, with virtually all vehicle makers
being named after their founders. Horch,
however, was hamstrung by the company
already in existence. It was the son of a
business partner that came up with the
idea of using the Latin version of his name.
As Horch means “listen” or “hark”, those
Latin scholars out there will be able to
make that leap pretty easily. And thus Audi
Automobilwerke GmbH was born.
While the Horch brand was focused on
luxury and grandeur, August Horch took
his new baby down a more sporting route
and embraced the burgeoning gentlemen’s
pastime of motorsport.
Between 1911 and 1914, Audi enjoyed
considerable success on the Austria Alpine
Run. The Type C, which later became
known as the “Alpensieger” (Alpine Victor),
was powered by a four-cylinder 3.5-liter
engine generating 35 hp and boasted an
impressive top speed of 80 km/h (50 mph).
Horch model 1, “vis-á-vis”, two-cylinder, 4-5 hp
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100 Years of
August Horch himself entered the race
with the Type C in 1911 and, on winning
it, decided to return in subsequent years
with an entire team of cars and drivers.
Audi was victorious every year through to
1914, picking up a substantial international
following along the way, until WWI came
along and put a damper on things.
In many ways, the Alpine Run years were
August Horch’s finest hour at Audi. As the
company emerged from WWI, its founder
began to take a back seat, moving in 1920
to Berlin to act as a technical consultant
on automotive matters to the German
government. By that time, however, the
foundations had been laid.
In keeping with Horch’s far-seeing
approach, which constantly challenged
contemporary thinking, Audi shook things
up in 1921 when it launched Germany’s
first left-hand drive car. Although cars
drove on the right side of the road, the
convention was for the driver to sit where
the coach driver had always sat — on the
right side — in order to ensure that the
horses didn’t steer into roadside ditches. For
Audi, however, it was clear that the more
imminent danger facing the passengers
of the automobile was from oncoming
vehicles and carriages. The Type K was
followed in 1923 by the six-cylinder Type
M, with Audi’s first eight-cylinder vehicle
appearing in 1927 — the now legendary
and gloriously-named Imperator.
It was in 1928 that the owner of
motorcycle manufacturer DKW, a Danish
entrepreneur named Jörgen Skafte
Rasmussen, acquired a majority stake in the
publicly-owned Audiwerke AG, going on to
merge it with DKW a year later.
Rasmussen had been working for some
time on the idea of a small front-wheel drive
car, but his endeavors had yet to come to
fruition when the full force of the depression
hit home. As the market for high-end luxury
Audis collapsed, Rasmussen applied his
Zwickau resources to the issue and, in 1931,
the first DKW Front saw the light of day.
Now, I don’t personally have much of a feel
for what marketing must have been like as
a commercial discipline in those days, but
I am forced to deduce that the guys who
named the “Imperator” were not necessarily
involved in the creative process that came
up with that particular name.
Regardless of the creativeness of its
moniker, the DKW Front was a hit from
day one. Within just two months of the
start of production, one of the earliest
true “people’s cars” was at number two
in Germany’s registration figures behind
Opel — a state of affairs that pretty much
remained until the outbreak of WWII.
Alongside downsizing, the great
depression was also a period of intense
rationalization within German industry —
giving rise to the formation of Auto Union
AG in 1932.
It was at the behest of the State Bank
of Saxony that Audiwerke and DKW
were merged with Horchwerke and the
automotive division of Wanderer to form
Production of DKW cars with front-wheel drive, 1937 (Type F7)
Audi 18/70 hp dating from 1925
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Charles de Gaulle in his Horch 830 BL
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Auto Union AG, marking the birth of the
four rings — each representing one of the
four original brands and bringing together
both of the companies founded by
August Horch.
The synergies of the four companies
were put to good use in the creation of a
coordinated model range. DKW occupied
the entry level with Wanderer covering
the mainstream mid-size sector, while Audi
took the luxury mid-size market. Horch, of
course, remained firmly placed in the highend prestige market.
Applying group synergy, the success
of the diminutive two-stroke DWK Front
was translated upwards to create the midsized Audi Front Type UW, powered by a
Wanderer 2.0 liter six-cylinder four-stroke
engine designed by Ferdinand Porsche. It
was during this period that Auto Union
became a force to reckon with on the race
track with the immensely successful Silver
Arrows.
It claimed victory after victory within
European Grand Prix with legendary vehicles
such as the 16-cylinder Type C and even
more legendary race drivers like Hans Stuck,
Tazio Nuvolari and Bernd Rosemeyer.
However, that all came to a crushing
end in 1939. Following the decimation
of German industry in the aftermath of
WWII and the annexing of East Germany
(including Saxony) by the Soviets, Auto
Union GmbH re-emerged in the garrison
town of Ingolstadt in Bavaria. Initially,
it concentrated on its pre-war breadand-butter products — a DKW van and
motorcycle. Its first post-war car didn’t
appear until 1950.
However, the new Auto Union failed
to make the necessary technical and
commercial decisions that would enable it
to return it to the leading position it had
enjoyed before the war. Despite the massive
growth in vehicle ownership in Germany
during the 1950s, it struggled to remain
competitive in the face of the new upstart
from the north — Volkswagen.
Eventually, in a spate of industry
rationalization, a major shareholder of both
Daimler-Benz and Auto Union “persuaded”
the Stuttgart company to buy up his
interests in Auto Union GmbH in 1958. It
went on to become a 100 percent subsidiary
of Daimler-Benz a year later. Thus, in yet
another exercise of full-circle completion,
the Horch name (both in German and
Latin), found their way back into the
Benz fold.
It was during this period of ownership
that the “Silver Arrow” racing name
managed to make the journey to Stuttgart,
where it has remained to this day as the
name of the Mercedes-Benz Formula 1
team. Having been somewhat forced into
making the acquisition in the first place,
Daimler-Benz presumably was of the
collective opinion that it served them right.
Daimler-Benz never really got
comfortable with its unwelcome foster
child. It did, however, throw a great deal
of investment its way — to no great effect.
Audi Front, Type UW Convertible
DKW F89 Meisterklasse Cabriolet
DKW Front
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100 Years off
30 men on roof of
DKW to demonstrate
strength of DKW’s
wooden coach work
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Auto Union stuck firmly to its DKW range of
small two-stroke cars, which slowly lost their
appeal in the face of advancing technology.
Auto Union was hemorrhaging money and
suffering considerable quality problems.
The task then fell to Daimler to revamp the
Auto Union product range with something
more “now”. In 1963, after much debate,
Daimler-Benz sent engineer Ludwig Kraus to
Ingolstadt as Technical Director, tasked with
putting a new Daimler four-cylinder, fourstroke engine into the DKW F 102. The new
product demanded a new approach and
the company decided to keep its two-stroke
and four-stroke products commercially
distinct. The new product would herald the
reawakening of the slumbering Audi brand
when it was launched as the Auto Union
“Audi Type” in August 1965.
By that time, however, there was a
lot more than just the engine combustion
cycle that had changed for Auto Union.
Never having developed a paternal
relationship with its Bavarian subsidiary,
Daimler-Benz finally managed to find a new
adoptive family for its problem child. Enter
Volkswagen.
By the time the Audi saw the light of
day, Auto Union was already well on its way
to becoming a Volkswagen subsidiary. VW
took a controlling stake in Auto Union in
early 1965.
The idea was to maintain the two-stroke
DKW business, but such was the success of
the Audi that Volkswagen gleefully dropped
the DKW money pit and turned over the
excess capacity at the modern Ingolstadt
plant to the production of VW Beetles.
But, while the re-emergence of Audi
actually took place on VW’s watch, there
was a very definite Daimler flavor about it
all. Ludwig (Wiggerl) Kraus was quickly able
to expand the Audi range with a number
of engine developments and body tweaks.
Within 12 months he had the original Audi
with a 72 hp engine, the Audi 80 with
80 hp and extra equipment, and the Audi
Super 90 with (wait for it…) 90 hp and lots
of extra bells and whistles.
Added to the production in Ingolstadt of
the Beetle and the extensive revamps that
VW had undertaken to the Auto Union sales
network, the new model range enabled
Auto Union to crawl back into profitability.
Having lost 84.2 million Marks in 1965, it
turned in a profit of 4.2 million Marks in
1966 — quite a turnaround.
However, despite their success, it was
clear that these cars — these “bastards” as
Kraus called them — could only function as
a stop gap. A completely new vehicle was
called for. Kraus envisaged re-establishing
the Audi brand in the mid-size sector and
had already begun development work on
the Audi 100.
But the noises from Wolfsburg were not
very supportive. Volkswagen wanted to
transfer all vehicle development northwards
and instructed Kraus to cut back his
development manpower drastically.
Kraus was not in the least enamored
of this notion and put up an intense battle
for development survival. With some inside
help from “sympathizers” in Wolfsburg, he
was able actually to increase his team and
worked secretly on the development of the
Audi 100.
When Auto Union boss Rudolf Leiding
accidentally stumbled upon a 1:1 scale
model of the Audi 100, such was his
enthusiasm for the idea that he put the full
force of his support behind this underground
development program. As far as Wolfsburg
was concerned the “F 104” was simply a
larger version of the “F 103” (the original
four-stroke Audi).
When the Audi 100 was presented to
the VW board as a fait accompli (looking
a great deal like a Mercedes on the inside,
by the way), Leiding was prepared for the
worst, even keeping his coat on for a sharp
exit. But, after what must have been a
truly nerve-wracking walk-round, VW boss
Heinrich Nordhoff turned to Leiding and
said, “Herr Leiding, you have a green light
for this car.”
It was the Audi 100 that saved the
Audi name from being reconsigned to that
massive trash can of old vehicle brands and,
indeed, created the gene pool of the Audis
we drive today.
Clearly, Audi is going to spend all of
2009 turning 100, so, rather than hit you
with it all in one go, I’m going to save the
rest of the story for another time …
Hans Stuck, star of the 1930s at the Nurburgring in 1937
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