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The Audi AG based in Ingolstadt in Bavaria is a German automobile manufacturer , which since the 1960s, the Volkswagen Group belongs and is ranked among the premium manufacturers since the 2000s.
The company came into being when August Horch founded A. Horch & Cie. Motorwagenwerke Zwickau , located in what was then the Kingdom of Saxony , had to rename his new August Horch Automobilwerke GmbH because the rights to the “Horch†brand no longer belonged to him after leaving. He found the solution in the suggestion of the Zwickau high school student Heinrich Fikentscher (son of Franz Fikentscher, who was a friend of August Horch), who translated Horch into Latin . Audi is the imperative singular ofaudire (in German to hear , to listen ) and means “Hear!†or “Listen!â€. On April 25, 1910, Audi Automobilwerke GmbH Zwickau was entered in the commercial register of the city of Zwickau.
In 1928, the small car and motorcycle manufacturer Zschopauer Motorenwerke JS Rasmussen AG , known for its DKW brand , took over Audiwerke AG Zwickau . Both companies went on in the middle of 1932 founded Auto Union AG , Chemnitz , to which still the Zwickauer Horchwerke AG and the vehicle factory Siegmar of the Wanderer-Werke in Schönau near Chemnitz belonged to. The amalgamation of the four car brands Audi, DKW, Horch and Wanderer was symbolically expressed in the Auto Union company logo with the intertwined rings, today's Audi logo. In the 1930s, the DKW F 1 to F 8 and the two Audi models UW and 225 were among the pioneers of front-wheel drive in Germany.
After the Second World War , a new Auto Union GmbH was founded in Ingolstadt (Bavaria) in 1949 . In addition to DKW motorcycles ( RT 125 W ), Schnellaster initially rolled off the production line and, from 1950, the new Düsseldorf- Derendorf plant built the F 89 passenger cars, both models with front-wheel drive. In 1958, Daimler-Benz acquired a majority in the share capital of Auto Union and the Düsseldorf plant subsequently produced light Mercedes vans . From 1964, the Volkswagen Group gradually took over Auto Union. Until then, she only had a car with herTwo-stroke engines were built under the DKW brand until 1965 when the Audi model with four-stroke engine came onto the market under the traditional brand from the prewar period. In the course of the merger with NSU Motorenwerke , Audi NSU Auto Union AG was created in 1969 . According to the merger partner, their headquarters were Neckarsulm until 1985 , before the company was shortened to Audi AG as a result of the expiry of the NSU brand and the headquarters moved back to Ingolstadt.
The sports car manufacturer Lamborghini has belonged to Audi AG since 1998 and the motorcycle manufacturer Ducati since 2012 .