The company’s leading figures consequently moved to Bavaria, where a new company was founded in Ingolstadt in 1949 under the name of Auto Union GmbH, to uphold the motor vehicle tradition of the company with the four-ring emblem.
The four rings emblem symbolize the 1932 merger of four previously independent manufacturers: Audi, DKW, Horch and Wanderer. These companies are the foundation stones on which the present-day Audi is built.
Horch & Cie was founded in 1899 but in 1909 August Horch quit the company he had founded and started a new company by translating his name, which means “hark!”, “listen!”, into Latin: Audi.
The first vehicles to leave the company’s production line after its new start were DKW’s successful models with two-stroke engines — motorcycles, cars and delivery vans.
A new Auto Union model appeared on the market in 1965, the company’s first post-war vehicle with a four-stroke engine. To emphasize this dawning of a new era, a new product name was likewise needed: the traditional name of Audi was resurrected.
A short time later, the last DKWs rolled off the production line in Ingolstadt. From then on, the new models with four-stroke engines were produced under the brand name “Audi”.
A new era had begun in another sense, too: the Volkswagen Group acquired the Ingolstadt-based company in 1965.
(source: Audi)
