The Audi story | Audi Forum Ingolstadt

Ego, engineering expertise from the likes of Karl Benz, Paul Daimler and Ferdinand Porsche and a desperate flight from Russian-occupied Germany helped shape Audi into the automotive powerhouse it is today.

The journey began in 1901 when engineer August Horch, having previously worked for Karl Benz, transformed 40 horse carriages into motorised machines bearing his name.

They were well-received by an upper class fascinated with the emergence of a new form of transportation and enabled Horch to relocate to Zwickau and expand his factory.

Horsch's business acumen didn't his engineering prowess and he had to take on partners, who fired him for failing to observe financial constraints. Undeterred, Horch started anew but he had to leave behind the name - he'd neglected to trademark it.

A friend's son suggested he apply the Latin translation of his name, which in German meant "hear or listen". The Latin derivative was Audi and the first car was built in 1910.

Horch went racing to prove his vehicles' merits and won the 2600km International Austrian Alpine Run from 1912-'14. By 1913 Audi cars had a roof, wire rims in place of wooden spokes and pneumatic tyres rather than solid rubber.

All cars had two spares - as did most vehicles of the era. Thrown horseshoes and the nails used to attach them meant the average distance between punctures was just 20km. Sourcing fuel was nearly as problematic. The first service station didn't appear in Germany until 1923 and owners had to resort to pharmacies.

By the mid 1920s,there were 60 makers in Germany and all of the opposition had adopted Henry Ford's innovative production line approach. Horsch persisted in handcrafting his cars, which again sent him chasing a financial saviour.

Adding to the rancour was the fact Horch-branded vehicles were the most popular luxury cars in the country at that time, largely due to the efforts of another engineering genius, Paul Daimler.

Jorgen Rasmussen bought a majority share in Audi in 1928 and built a small car powered by a two-stroke engine from his DKW motorcycle business.

The Great Depression all but killed the German industry, leaving just 16 brands. The Saxony Regional Bank funded the DKW, Audi, Horch and Wanderer brands and in 1932 got them to form the Auto Union, marking the creation of the four-ringed emblem.

The Auto Union represented motorcycles and cars and gave the combined company a potential foothold into household, irrespective of their income. They took on Mercedes-Benz in grand prix racing, using a vehicle designed and developed by none other than Ferdinand Porsche.

The mid-mounted supercharged V16 race car with 390kW engine as notoriously hard to drive and brutally fast. In 1936, Bernd Rosemeyer took his Auto Union Type C to five victories and the European title.

Rosemeyer was killed in 1938 - his car flipped at 400km/h while attempting to break Benz's open road speed record of 432.7km/h, set by his great rival Rudolf Caracciola only an hour earlier. His death ended the on-road competition between the automotive giants.

With the onset of WWII, the focus switched to military vehicles but it was geography, rather than Germany losing the war, that almost killed off the illustrious brand.

Auto Union's factories were in Saxony and were seized and dismantled by the invading Russian army. Prototype vehicles and the race cars were returned to the USSR to be reverse-engineered.

DKW went to Ingolstadt, where, with the help of the Bavarian government, in 1950 it resumed building two-stroke bikes and front-drive cars.

Mercedes-Benz bought out the Auto Union in 1959 then sold it to Volkswagen in 1964. VW built Beetles at Ingolstadt, dropping the two-strokes and marking the demise of DKW. It bought back the Audi nameplate in 1965. VW bought struggling NSU in 1969 and created Audi NSU Auto Union. In1985, Audi got its own identity. The rest, as they say, is history.