Luxury and excellent engineering, these are just a few of the things Audi is
proud of. This luxury car make comes from Germany’s leading and
oldest auto manufacturer, the Horch & Cie Company. By this fact
alone, you can tell how dependable and Audi is, having survived the
industry for more than a century now and still working hard to give us
the finest line of autos. Today, Audi is part of the Volkswagen Group
and is known to us for the tagline, “Vorsprung durch Technik"
(Advantage through Technology).
August Horch founded the
company in 1899 but he developed his first car in 1901 in Zwickau, East
Germany. His first car was unique, having what Horch himself has called
the “impact-free” engine. It was horizontal, which enabled it to
absorb vibrations of the crankshaft, thus, it’s impact-free. It had an
alloy crankcase and was the first in the industry. But soon, Horch left
the company which he himself has started because of a dispute with
other owners of the company. He again established another car
manufacturing company and continued to use the name Horch for its
vehicles. This resulted to a legal dispute, forcing him to change the
company to Audi, which is the Latin translation of his name.
The first Audi autos were 2612 cc cars, and then later on, it produced
more powerful four cylinder 3564 cc, 4680 cc and 5720 cc autos. These
Audi vehicles took pride of their exceptional body work, heavy duty
auto parts and tough engines too, qualifying them as luxury cars at
that time. But more than its great styling, Audi cars are best known
for its performance. They have been stars in many sporting and racing
events as early as 1911. This year, Horch won the most prestigious race
at the time, the International Austrian Alpine Run. The first victory
motivated Horch to create a team that will represent the company in the
succeeding races, which eventually the team won.
