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John Matras
Auto Review ExaminerFor almost thirty years, award-winning author John Matras has written about cars. He’s been in all the major car magazines, on the web and written five books, and he’s even been translated into Estonian. His website is carbuzzard.com.
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Lords of the Rings: Audi vs. the Olympics
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by John Matras, Auto Review Examiner
The five rings of the Olympic symbol “represent the five parts of the world which now are won over to Olympism and willing to accept healthy competition,” according to Pierre de Coubertin, one of the founders of the Olympic Games. It was first used at the 1920 Olympics.Audi’s rings, however, made their debut in 1932, symbolizing the merger of four German car companies, Audi, DKW, Horch and Wanderer. The oldest of these was Horch, founded by August Horch in 1899, to build automobiles, with manufacturing beginning in 1901. When the common financial difficulties of early (and some current) carmakers occurred, the directors of Horch the car company kicked out Horch the founder in 1909. Horch immediately went back into business building cars, but since his name was already taken, he did the next best thing, translating his name into Latin: Audi. Horch, in the Saxony dialect is the command form of “listen” as is Audi in Latin.
Wanderer began as Winklhofer & Jaenicke who had made automobiles beginning in 1902 branded with the company’s name. No doubt your Winklhofer & Jaenicke would have impressed the fräuleins, but when the company began exporting in 1911, the brand name Wanderer was wisely chosen and then later adopted for domestic production. It’s certainly easier to fit “Audi” in the Make box on your vehicle registration form.
Herr Horch brought these all together in 1932 in an Alfred Sloan-esqe arrangement where DKW would sell motorcycles and less expensive cars, with Wanderer then Audi above that, with Horch as the premier brand. The assemblage was called Auto Union, for obvious reasons, and the Auto Union four-ring logo symbolized that union of auto makers.
Auto Union didn’t build any production cars under its own name, much like General Motors, but Auto Union went racing with monstrous race cars bearing the Auto Union rings on their grilles. With a mid-engine design and (literally) tire-shredding power, the cars were quite advanced for the day and competed heads up with Mercedes and Maserati in pre-war Grand Prix competition.
The war changed things, of course. Horch disappeared forever, as did Wanderer. DKW survived, thanks to its emphasis on inexpensive cars and motorcycles. The two-cylinder two-stroke engine was even cribbed by Saab to power its first car, the Saab 92. DKW did revive the Auto Union brand but only for road cars that were like anything but the prewar racers.
In 1958, Mercedes bought DKW/Auto Union, but decided better of it and in 1964 sold Volkswagen the factory in Ingolstadt and the DKW/Auto Union car lines came with it. VW spiked the Auto Union brand a year later and the “Deke” two-strokes disappeared about the same time. VW started more or less afresh, however, by reviving the Audi brand.
Auto Union continued as a Volkswagen subsidiary, however, and in 1969 VW married it to NSU, a motorcycle manufacturer and more notably the patent holder for the Wankel rotary engine. The pair started their new life together as Audi NSU Auto Union AG. But after rather infamous failure of the rotary-engined NSU Ro80, the luster was off the NSU brand and it too was ditched. With NSU gone and only Audi surviving, the company was renamed Audi AG in 1985. Since then the VW-Audi Group has acquired Skoda, Seat, Lamborghini and Bentley, odd bedfellows as ever there were
That’s the long way of saying that the Audi rings may have been inspired by the Olympic rings, but then, the Olympic rings are said to have been inspired by the symbol of interlocking wedding rings.
But now, about those rings on the Ballantine Ale logo…
Illustrations, top to bottom: Olympics logo, symbolizing five continents; modern Audi logo: August Horch; Auto Union logo fromt the '30s with brand logos in the rings; restored Auto Union Type D racer; Ballantine Ale logo.
Visit John Matras' website, carbuzzard.com.
Topics: Audi , Automotive History
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