Logo? Of course! When the Auto Union AG was established about 90 years ago, that was also their first thought. How four businesses eventually evolved into four rings and the world-renowned AUDI AG. And here’s why the process of sand painting is so crucial to the creation of logos:
“A good logo is one that your big toe can scratch into the sand. Kurt Weidemann, a well-known type designer and graphic artist, said as much (19222011). Based on his statements, the designers’ directions could have been straightforward and basic yet nonetheless clever and memorable nearly 90 years ago. In 1932, the four businesses Audi, DKW, Horch, and Wanderer merged to establish Auto Union AG, which later changed its name to AUDI AG. The business also required a new logo. The creation of the four interlocking rings.
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What do the four Audi rings stand for?
Audi, DKW, Horch, and Wanderer merged to form Auto Union AG, which at the time was Germany’s second-largest motor vehicle manufacturing firm. The union was symbolized by four interlocking rings. Here are some quick facts about the history of the current AUDI AG.
Audi
August Horch founded a business in Zwickau on July 16, 1909, however it was unable to use its founder’s name due to unfair competition. By translating Horch’s name, which in German means “hark!” or “listen!” into Latin, a new name for the business was discovered. As a result, on April 25, 1910, the second business founded by August Horch officially opened for business as Audi Automobilwerke GmbH, Zwickau.
The designation of a certain market sector to each of the numerous brands in order to produce a coordinated model range was one of the secrets to the success of the still-emerging Auto Union. This resulted to the creation of the Audi ‘Front’ Type UW, a midsize car for the Audi brand, which allowed the new organization to utilize synergy benefits for the first time.
The front-wheel drive of the new Audi was its standout feature. The front-wheel drive expertise of DKW was merely applied to a midsize car. Ferdinand Porsche’s 2-liter, 6-cylinder Wanderer engine served as the vehicle’s power source, while the highly regarded Dresden coachbuilder Glser constructed the convertible models. The saloon version’s body came from Horch’s body shop.
‘Front’ Type UW Audi
The designation indicated that in the spring of 1933, a Type U powered by a Wanderer engine finally entered production. A year later, in order to make room at the Audi facility for the expanding production of DKW front-wheel-drive vehicles, production operations for Audi were moved to the nearby Horch plant. The redesigned Audi Front 225 was introduced at the 1935 Berlin Motor Show and stayed on the market until 1938. It was technically upgraded and fitted with an upgraded 2.3-liter Wanderer engine. The Audi 920, the model that succeeded it, likewise clearly demonstrated the usage of a modular construction technology. The Wanderer W 23 six-cylinder model’s chassis, which once again had traditional rear-wheel drive, and contemporary body style were practically interchangeable. Horch designed the inline six-cylinder OHC engine for this exquisite vehicle, and DKW floating-axle technology was used for the rear suspension. In December 1938, the first models of the new vehicle rolled off the assembly line at the Horch plant of Auto Union. The Audi 920 quickly gained popularity among consumers and was a hit on the market.
The start of the Second World War abruptly put an end to this success. The group’s operations shifted to the production of armaments and the production of civilian cars was reduced to a minimum. For this, prisoners of war, detainees of concentration camps, and forced laborers were all recruited. In April 1940, the final Audi of this era was created. For the next twenty-five years, no more passenger cars would be produced by Audi.
DKW
Rasmussen & Ernst, the company that was initially established in Chemnitz in 1902, relocated to Zschopau in the Erzgebirge region in 1907. At first, it produced and sold vulcanization machinery, centrifuges of all types, car mudguards, and exhaust-steam oil separators for steam power plants. Jrgen Skafte Rasmussen, the company’s founder, started experimenting with steam-powered automobiles in 1916 and registered DKW (short for Dampfkraftwagensteam-driven vehicle) as a trademark in 1922. The business started producing two-stroke engines in 1919, first in the form of a functional toy engine. This resulted in a name change to “Zschopauer Motorenwerke J.S. Rasmussen OHG” in 1921. The first DKW-branded motorcycles rolled out of the Zschopau facility a year later.
When the four businesses Audi, DKW, Horch, and Wanderer joined on June 29, 1932, to form the Auto Union, Zschopauer Motorenwerke/DKW was selected as the parent company for ethical and societal grounds. Before moving to Chemnitz in 1936, the administrative headquarters of Auto Union AG were housed in Zschopau’s DKW headquarters from 1932 to 1936.
Rasmussen and his Zschopauer Motorenwerke were crucial to the founding of Auto Union AG, and DKW products were equally crucial to the growth of the new business’s economy. The low-end of the market (the price range between 345 and 3,400 Reichsmarks) was served by DKW motorcycles and vehicles, which represented the high-volume Auto Union model line.
Due to the high volume of DKW bikes produced, Auto Union, which had a DKW facility in Zschopau, became the largest motorcycle manufacturer in the world in 1937 after producing a total of 55,470 motorcycles. This honor had previously been held by the Zschopau-based firm in 1928.
DKW stationary engines, which had an immensely broad program appropriate for application in a number of fields, were another significant production area (e.g. agriculture, road construction, the fire brigade, the army and public authorities).
It is well accepted that DKW products are straightforward, useful, dependable, affordable, robust, and effective. The Zschopau-based company established itself as a technological innovator in the fields of two-stroke engines, front-wheel drives, and body construction (wooden and plastic bodies). This spirit of innovation also fueled Auto Union AG’s capacity for innovation, which resulted in the establishment of a central engineering design office (ZKB) in Chemnitz and a central testing unit (ZVA) for all Auto Union brands beginning in 1936.
The inter-company cooperation that produced DKW cars was a logistical masterstroke: the four-cylinder versions with rear-wheel drive were also assembled at the DKW body manufacturing facility in Berlin’s Spandau district, while the engines were made at the main Zschopau factory and the bodies there. At the Audi plant in Zwickau, the front-wheel-drive versions were assembled.
By introducing a comparable model, the DKW F 9, in the late 1930s, the DKW brand gave Auto Union the required capacity to fend off the anticipated competition from the “KdF-Wagen” (the People’s Car or Volkswagen). Due to this, Auto Union was the only automaker in Germany to have a competitive model ready to go before this Volkswagen model.
Following the war, the enormously well-liked, tried-and-true DKW models helped the recently established Auto Union GmbH in West Germany establish itself and also sparked a revival of the car sector in Saxony in East Germany.
Horch
There were numerous car manufacturers in Germany towards the end of the 19th century. One of them was August Horch & Cie., established in Cologne on November 14, 1899. One of the early figures in the development of the vehicle was August Horch. His professional background comprised three years in head of car production at Carl Benz in Mannheim before starting his own firm. August Horch relocated his company to Zwickau in 1904 and changed it into a joint-stock company.
August Horch, the company’s founder, had established the notion that the Horch Werke in Zwickau should only produce high-quality, potent automobiles. From the beginning, Horch’s automobiles were among the top offerings in the German auto industry.
Large-scale rationalization initiatives were put in place in the 1920s to increase the profitability of assembly-line production. Following the introduction of the first eight-cylinder car in Germany in the autumn of 1926, Horch goods became some of the top ones produced by the country’s auto industry. Previously, the Horch firm primarily produced automobiles with four-cylinder engines; however, in recent years, its engineers have focused exclusively on massive, prestigious eight-cylinder vehicles.
The Horch 8 came to represent style, luxury, and cutting-edge technology in German auto design. The Horch firm also started to establish standards elsewhere. Horch had a market share of more than 44% in Germany in 1932 for engines larger than 4.2 liters.
It was obvious when Auto Union AG was founded that the Horch brand should dominate the premium market sector within the new group of businesses. Additionally, the Horch Body Design Office served as the group’s main design studio and established the various models’ stylistic guidelines. The Horch factory’s utilization of cutting-edge production techniques served as a model for the other manufacturers in the group.
The Horch model program was split between large vehicles powered by straight-eight engines and smaller vehicles powered by V8 engines starting in 1933. When it became apparent that more potent engines would be required due to the overwhelming amount of opulent equipment available for a Horch, the 5-litre straight-power eight’s output was raised to 120 horsepower by giving it a camshaft with steeper lobes and increasing the compression ratio. Similar techniques were used on the smaller V8 engine, which saw its power output increase from 62 horsepower at launch to 82 horsepower for the 1937 model before peaking at 92 horsepower in 1939.
Plans for the creation of many other models, including new engines and streamlined bodies, were put out for Horch automobiles. Unfortunately, the war years prevented the development of more than a few demonstration vehicles and testing prototypes.
Approximately 42,000 Horch eight-cylinder automobiles were produced between 1927 and 1940, when peacetime manufacture came to a halt. More than 70,000 eight-cylinder automobiles left the Zwickau factory at that time, a number far above anything attained by Horch’s German rivals. This total includes vehicles provided to the military authorities up until the final end of manufacturing in 1942.
Wanderer
Johann Baptist Winklhofer and Richard Adolf Jaenicke, two mechanics, established a bicycle repair shop in Chemnitz in 1885. Due to the tremendous demand at the time, they soon started producing their own bicycles. These were sold under the Wanderer brand, and the company itself started doing business as Wanderer Fahrradwerke AG in 1896. In 1902, Wanderer produced its first motorcycle. In 1913, the concept of expanding into the car industry was actually put into action.
At a very early point, Wanderer Werke AG in Chemnitz had a varied production schedule that included cars (from 1898), bicycles (from 1885), motorcycles (from 1902), office machines (from 1904), and machine tools (from 1913).
Audiwerke AG and Horchwerke AG’s share capital was promptly bought by Zschopauer Motorenwerke AG, the parent firm, when Auto Union AG was established in 1932. However, the Wanderer Werke automotive division’s fourth “ring” was acquired through a purchase and a lease. With sections for bicycles, light motorbikes, office equipment, and machine tools, Wanderer Werke continued to exist as a distinct, independent business.
The mid-size sector was given to the Wanderer automobile brand inside Auto Union AG (prices between 3,875 and 8,250 Reichsmarks). Opel and Daimler-Benz were the two primary competitors in this market area, along with BMW.
Among the Auto Union enterprises, the Wanderer brand came in second place to DKW in terms of production volume and revenue. In 1937, Auto Union AG produced 54,765 vehicles, or 25.3% of all vehicles registered in Germany (216,538). DKW vehicles accounted for 19.5 percent of all registrations (42,143), Wanderer cars for 4.7 percent (10,177), and Audi and Horch each had registration rates under one percent.
The Wanderer models in the overall Auto Union program started to get a reputation for being very uninteresting mid-size vehicles. However, the Wanderer W 51 and Wanderer W 25 K sports cars with supercharged engines were unveiled in 1936 and were the first to use contemporary Auto Union body style. In the years that followed, the other Auto Union brands adopted this and put it into practice. The Wanderer brand was intended to be methodically repositioned and given a sporty, forward-thinking image.
When the Second World War started in 1939, this trend came to an abrupt end. The final Wanderer vehicles rolled out of the factory in 1942, and no efforts were made to resurrect the Wanderer name in the automotive sector following the war.
The Auto Union AG, Chemnitz
On the State Bank of Saxony’s initiative, Audiwerke, Horchwerke, and Zschopauer Motorenwerke J. S. Rasmussen AG (DKW) united on June 29, 1932, to become Auto Union AG. A simultaneous purchase and leasing arrangement was reached with Wanderer with the purpose of acquiring its motor vehicle segment. The headquarters of the new business were in Chemnitz. After the merger, Auto Union AG surpassed BMW as Germany’s second-largest automaker. The company’s logo, which was made up of four interlocking rings, was meant to represent the founder companies’ unbreakable bond. The brand names Audi, DKW, Horch, and Wanderer were kept. Within the group, each of the four brands was given a specific market area to represent: Horchluxury vehicles at the top of the market; Wanderermidsize cars; Audicars in the deluxe midrange segment; and DKWmotorcycles and tiny cars.
What does BMW mean?
What does the term BMW mean? Bayerische Motoren Werke GmbH is known as BMW. In 1917, the Munich company Rapp-Motorenwerke was transformed into BMW. Before being refounded as BMW AG in 1922, the firm was incorporated as Knorr-Bremse AG in 1920.
Why does the Audi logo exist?
Let’s start at the very beginning: the Audi brand’s history dates back to the 19th century and includes
Julius Horch The mechanical engineer established his own company, August Horch & Cie, in 1899. Initially, he produced two-cylinder autos, and later, four-cylinder vehicles. He departed the business in 1909 as a result of a disagreement with the board of directors.
Horch then started a new vehicle company that same year. He could not use the name Horch because it was already in use, so he converted his last name into Latin: “Audi. The first vehicle under the new brand hit the streets in 1910. With three victories in a row at the International Austrian Alpine Rally, one of the toughest rallies of the day, between 1912 and 1914, Audi attracted attention.
Four ringsfour brands
Four interlocking rings represented the joining of four Saxony-based automakers: Audi, DKW, Horch, and Wanderer to form Auto Union AG. Here are some quick facts about the history of the current AUDI AG.