ELECTRONIC CAR PARTS: 16) AUDI CARS

by engr. AFAN BAHADUR KHAN

AUDI AG,is a German Volkswagen subsidiary which produces cars under the Audi brand, (pronounced /aˈʊdi/). The name Audi is based on a Latin translation of the last name of the founder August "Horch", itself the German word for “hear." Another explanation for the origin of the name is as an acronym for “Auto Union Deutschland Ingolstadt."

Audi is headquartered in Ingolstadt, Bavaria, Germany and has been an almost wholly-owned (99.7%) subsidiary of the Volkswagen Group (Volkswagen AG) since 1964. Volkswagen Group incorporated Audi when it was acquired as part of Volkswagen's purchase of the Auto Union and NSU Motorenwerke AG (NSU) assets.

Audi's corporate tagline is Vorsprung durch Technik, meaning "Advantage through Technology". The German-language tagline is used in many European countries, including the United Kingdom, and in other markets, such as Latin America, Oceania and parts of Asia including Japan. The North American tagline is "Innovation through technology", but in Canada the German tagline Vorsprung durch Technik is now used in advertising.

History

The company traces its origins back to 1899 and August Horch. The first Horch automobile was produced in 1901 in Zwickau. In 1909, Horch was forced out of the company he had founded. He then started a new company in Zwickau and continued using the Horch brand.

His former partners sued him for trademark infringement and a German court determined that the Horch brand belonged to his former company.August Horch was barred from using his own family name in his new car business, so he called a meeting at the apartment of Franz Fikentscher to come up with a new name for his company. During this meeting Franz's son was quietly studying Latin in a corner of the room. Several times he looked like he was on the verge of saying something but would just swallow his words and continue working, until he finally blurted out, "Father – audiatur et altera pars... wouldn't it be a good idea to call it audi instead of horch?". "Horch!" in German means "Hark!" or "listen", which is "Audi" in Latin (compare audible). The idea was enthusiastically accepted by everyone attending the meeting.It is sometimes (incorrectly) believed that AUDI is a backronym (a reversed acronym) which stands for "Auto Union Deutschland Ingolstadt".

Audi started with a 2,612 cc (2.6 litre) four cylinder model[clarification needed] followed by a 3564 cc (3.6 L) model, as well as 4680 cc (4.7 L) and 5720 cc (5.7L) models. These cars were successful even in sporting events. The first six cylinder model,[clarification needed] 4655 cc (4.7 L) appeared in 1924.

August Horch left the Audi company in 1920. In September 1921 Audi became the first German car manufacturer to present a production car with left-hand drive, the Audi Type K.Left-hand drive spread and established dominance during the 1920s because it provided a better view of oncoming traffic, making overtaking maneuvers safer.

Second World War period

The build up and onset of World War II encouraged the development and production of special vehicles for military purposes in the 1930s. The Auto Union became an important supplier of vehicles to Germany's armed forces. Following the outbreak of war, civilian production was interrupted in May 1940.After this, the company produced exclusively for military purposes. The Auto Union plants were heavily bombed and severely damaged.

In 1945 on the orders of the Soviet military administration in Germany, the Saxon plants of Auto Union were dismantled as part of war reparations. Following this, the company’s entire assets were expropriated without compensation.On 17 August 1948 Auto Union AG of Chemnitz was deleted from the commercial register The company's Zwickau factory was located in what was the Soviet occupied zone of Germany and was expropriated to become the Volkseigener Betrieb (or "People Owned Enterprise") Automobilwerk Zwickau AWZ for short (which translates into English as Automobile factory Zwickau). These actions had the effect of liquidating Germany's Auto Union AG.

A new Auto Union was launched in Ingolstadt, Bavaria with loans from the Bavarian state government and Marshall Plan aid.The reformed company was launched 3 September, 1949 and continued DKW's tradition of producing front-wheel drive vehicles with two-stroke engines.This included production of a small but sturdy 125 cc motorcycle and a DKW delivery van, the DKW F89L also known as DKW-Schnelllaster. Many employees of the destroyed factories in Zwickau came to Ingolstadt and restarted the production.

In 1950, after a former Rheinmetall gun factory in Düsseldorf was established as a second assembly facility the company's first post-war car went into production: the DKW Meisterklasse F 89 P, available as a saloon and a four-seater Karmann convertible. The van and sedan were based on the DKW F8 and the DKW F9 pre-war constructions.

The former Audi factory in Zwickau, now a under Soviet control, manufactured models similar to the German versions. Production of these models, IFA F8 and IFA F9, began in 1949. West German and East German/Russian models were equipped with the traditional and renowned DKW two-stroke engines.

Post-War period

In 1958, Daimler-Benz acquired 87% of Auto Union and in the next year 100%.

In 1964, Volkswagen acquired the factory in Ingolstadt and the trademark rights of the Auto Union. Two-stroke engines became less popular towards the middle of the 1960s as customers were more attracted to the comfortable four-stroke engines. In September 1965, the last DKW model, the DKW F102, got a four-stroke engine implanted and some front and rear styling changes. Volkswagen dumped the brand DKW because of its two-stroke smell, relaunching the Audi brand. The new model was classified internally as the F103 and sold as simply the "Audi" (the name being a model designation rather than the manufacturer, which was still officially Auto Union) but later came to be known as the Audi 72. Developments of the model were named for their horsepower ratings and sold as the Audi 60, 75, 80, and Super 90. These models sold until 1972.

In 1969, Auto Union merged with NSU, based in Neckarsulm, near Stuttgart. In the 1950s, NSU had been the world's largest manufacturer of motorcycles, but had moved on to produce small cars like the NSU Prinz, the TT and TTS versions of which are still popular as vintage race cars. NSU then focused on new rotary engines based on the ideas of Felix Wankel. In 1967, the new NSU Ro 80 was a space-age car, well ahead of its time in technical details such as aerodynamics, light weight, and safety but teething problems with the rotary engines put an end to the independence of NSU. Today the Neckarsulm plant is used to produce the larger Audi models: the R8, and the "RS" model range.

The mid-sized car that NSU had been working on, the K70, was intended to slot between the rear-engined Prinz models and the futuristic NSU Ro 80. However, Volkswagen took the K70 for its own range, spelling the end of NSU as a separate brand.

The modern era of Audi

The new merged company was known as Audi NSU Auto Union AG, and saw the emergence of Audi as a separate brand for the first time since the pre-war era. Volkswagen introduced the Audi brand to the United States for the 1970 model year.

The first new car of this regime was the Audi 100 of 1968. This was soon joined by the Audi 80/Fox (which formed the basis for the 1973 Volkswagen Passat) in 1972 and the Audi 50 (later rebadged as the Volkswagen Polo) in 1974. The Audi 50 was a seminal design in many ways, because it was the first incarnation of the Golf/Polo concept, one that led to a hugely successful world car.

The Audi image at this time was a conservative one, and so, a proposal from chassis engineer Jörg Bensinger was accepted to develop the four-wheel drive technology in Volkswagen's Iltis military vehicle for an Audi performance car and rally racing car. The performance car, introduced in 1980, was named the "Audi Quattro," a turbocharged coupé which was also the first German large-scale production vehicle to feature permanent all-wheel drive through a center differential. Commonly referred to as the "Ur-Quattro" (the "Ur-" prefix is a German augmentative used, in this case, to mean "original" and is also applied to the first generation of Audi's S4 and S6 sport sedans, as in "UrS4" and "UrS6"), few of these vehicles were produced (all hand-built by a single team), but the model was a great success in rallying. Prominent wins proved the viability of all-wheel drive racecars, and the Audi name became associated with advances in automotive technology.

In 1985, with the Auto Union and NSU brands effectively dead, the company's official name was now shortened to simply Audi AG.

In 1986, as the Passat-based Audi 80 was beginning to develop a kind of "grandfather's car" image, the type 89 was introduced. This completely new development sold extremely well. However, its modern and dynamic exterior belied the low performance of its base engine, and its base package was quite spartan (even the passenger-side mirror was an option.) In 1987, Audi put forward a new and very elegant Audi 90, which had a much superior set of standard features. In the early 1990s, sales began to slump for the Audi 80 series, and some basic construction problems started to surface.

This decline in sales was not helped in the USA by a 60 Minutes report which purported to show that Audi automobiles suffered from "unintended acceleration". The 60 Minutes report was based on customer reports of acceleration when the brake pedal was pushed. Independent investigators concluded that this was most likely due to a close placement of the accelerator and brake pedals (unlike American cars), and the inability, when not paying attention, to distinguish between the two. (In race cars, when manually downshifting under heavy braking, the accelerator has to be used in order to match revs properly, so both pedals have to be close to each other to be operated by the right foot at once, toes on the brake, heel on the accelerator; a driving technique called heel-and-toe). This did not become an issue in Europe, possibly due to more widespread experience among European drivers with manual transmissions.

The report immediately crushed Audi sales, and Audi renamed the affected model (The 5000 became the 100/200 in 1989, as it was elsewhere). Audi had contemplated withdrawing from the American market until sales began to recover in the mid-1990s. The turning point for Audi was the sale of the new A4 in 1996, and with the release of the A4/A6/A8 series, which was developed together with VW and other sister brands (so called "platforms").

In the early part of the 21st century, Audi set forth on a German racetrack to claim and maintain several World Records, such as Top Speed Endurance. This effort was in-line with the company's heritage from the 1930s racing era "Silver Arrows".

Audi R8

Currently, Audi's sales are growing strongly in Europe. 2004 marked the 11th straight increase in sales, selling 779,441 vehicles worldwide. Record figures were recorded from 21 out of about 50 major sales markets. The largest sales increases came from Eastern Europe (+19.3%), Africa (+17.2%) and the Middle East (+58.5%)[citation needed]. In March 2005, Audi built its first two dealerships in India following its high increase in sales in the region.

Their 2007 worldwide sales have been released as 964,151 vehicles sold, yet another record for the brand. In 2008, Audi has achieved the 13th record year in a row passing the 1 million unit mark with 1,003,400 sold units.

Motorsports

Audi has competed in numerous forms of motorsports. Audi's rich tradition in motorsport began with their former company Auto Union in the 1930s. In the 1990s, Audi dominated the Touring and Super Touring categories of motor racing after success in circuit racing in North America.

Rallying

Walter Röhrl with his Quattro A2 during the 1984 Rally Portugal

In 1980, Audi released the Quattro, a four-wheel drive turbocharged car that went on to win rallies and races worldwide. It is considered one of the most significant rally cars of all time because it was one of the first to take advantage of the then-recently changed rules which allowed the use of four-wheel drive in competition racing. Many critics doubted the viability of four-wheel drive racers, thinking them to be too heavy and complex, yet the Quattro was to become a successful car. Leading its first rally it went off the road, however the rally world had been served notice 4WD was the future. The Quattro went on to achieve much success in the World Rally Championship. It won the 1983 (Hannu Mikkola) and the 1984 (Stig Blomqvist) drivers' titles, and brought Audi the manufacturers' title in 1982 and 1984.

Audi Quattro S1 driven at the 2007 Rallye Deutschland

In 1984, Audi launched the short-wheelbase Sport Quattro which dominated races in Monte Carlo and Sweden, with Audi taking all podium places, but succumbed to problems further into WRC contention. In 1985, after another season mired in mediocre finishes, Walter Röhrl finished the season in his Sport Quattro S1, and helped place Audi second in the manufacturers' points. Audi also received rally honors in the Hong Kong to Beijing rally in that same year. Michèle Mouton, the first and only female driver to win a round of the World Rally Championship and a driver for Audi, took the Sport Quattro S1, now simply called the "S1", and raced in the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb. The climb race pits a driver and car to drive up a 4,302 meter high mountain in Colorado and in 1985, Michèle Mouton set a new record of 11:25.39, and being the first woman to set a Pikes Peak record. In 1986, Audi formally left international rally racing following an accident in Portugal involving driver Joaquim Santos in his Ford RS200. Santos swerved to avoid hitting spectators in the road, and left the track into the crowd of spectators on the side, killing three and injuring 30. Bobby Unser used an Audi in that same year to claim a new record for the Pikes Peak Hill Climb at 11:09.22.

In 1987, Walter Röhrl claimed the title for Audi setting a new Pikes Peak International Hill Climb record of 10:47.85 in his Audi S1 which he retired from the WRC two years earlier. The Audi S1 employed Audi's time-tested 5-cylinder turbo charged engine, with the final version generating 441 kW (600 PS; 591 bhp). The engine was mated to a 6-speed gearbox and ran on Audi's famous all-wheel drive system. All of Audi's top drivers drove this car; Hannu Mikkola, Stig Blomqvist, Walter Röhrl and Michèle Mouton. This Audi S1 started the S-series of cars for Audi which now represents an increased level of sports options and quality in the Audi line-up.

Sports Car racing

Beginning in 1999, Audi built the Audi R8R (open-top prototype) and the Audi R8C (GT-Prototype) to compete in sports car racing, including the Le Mans Prototype LMP900 class at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. For the 2000 season, Audi focussed mainly on the new Audi R8, due to favorable rules for open-top prototypes. The factory-supported Joest Racing team won at Le Mans three times in a row with the Audi R8 (2000 — 2002), as well as winning every race in the American Le Mans Series in its first year. Audi also sold the car to customer teams such as Champion Racing.

Audi R10 TDI

In 2003, two Bentley Speed 8s, with engines designed by Audi, and driven by Joest drivers loaned to the fellow Volkswagen Group company, competed in the GTP class, and finished the race in the top two positions, while the Champion Racing R8 finished third overall and first in the LMP900 class. Audi returned to the winner's circle at the 2004 race, with the top three finishers all driving R8s: Audi Sport Japan Team Goh finished first, Audi Sport UK Veloqx second, and Champion Racing third.

At the 2005 24 Hours of Le Mans, Champion Racing entered two R8s along with an R8 from the Audi PlayStation Team Oreca. The R8s (which were built to old LMP900 regulations) received a narrower air inlet restrictor, reducing power, and an additional 50 kg (110 lb) of weight compared to the newer LMP1 chassis. On average, the R8s were about 2–3 seconds off pace compared to the Pescarolo-Judd. But with a team of excellent drivers and experience, both Champion R8s were able to take first and third while the ORECA team took fourth. The Champion team was also the first American team to win Le Mans since the Gulf Ford GT's in 1967. This also ends the long era of the R8; however, its replacement for 2006, called the Audi R10 TDI, was unveiled on 13 December 2005.

The R10 TDI employs many new features, including a twin-turbocharged diesel engine. Its first race was the 2006 12 Hours of Sebring as a race-test for the 2006 24 Hours of Le Mans, which it later went on to win. Audi has been on the forefront of motorsports, claiming a historic win in the first ever diesel sports car at 12 Hours of Sebring. Audi has achieved the title as the most dominant motor sport power since the start of the 21st century, continuing its long and storied motor sport heritage. As well as winning the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2006 making history, the R10 TDI has also shown its capabilities by beating the Peugeot 908 HDi FAP in 2007, and beating Peugeot again in 2008.

SOME MODELS OF AUDI CARS

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