1) Audi or Horch?
August Horch was an automotive pioneer, working for Karl Benz in the 1890s just a few years after the first three-wheeled chuggabug had been invented. He started up his own car company in 1899, and the only reason he’s not as famous as Benz is because his name hasn’t survived on a modern car – well sort of !
Horch, pronounced ‘hork’, launched his first car in 1901. But in August 1909 he was booted out by his own board. Legal wranglings stopped him starting another company called Horch, so his business partner’s son – doing his Latin homework – said: ‘Why not call it Audi, papa?’
Now, I’d have said ‘do your bloody homework, I’m trying to talk to Mr Horch!’ But he didn’t. Because the German word ‘horch’ is related to the English word ‘hark’, meaning ‘listen’ – and the Latin translation is ‘audi’. Clever little bastard.

2)Dress to the left Sir….
In the days when people rode horses to get about, they kept to the left so they could keep the reins in their left and free their right hand to wave or chop a head off with a sword. Later, coachmen kept left and sat on the right. That’s why the first cars were right-hand drive too.
English never questioned this convention, but some countries were a little hazy about it; in Germany, drivers generally kept right, even though their first cars were right-handed too. All of Audi’s cars were right-hand drive unitil 1921, when the Audi Type K became the first car in Germany to be sold as a Left-hander. Visitors to the Berlin motor show stood and stared. ‘Who’d believe it, Ingrid?’ This simple idea took years to catch on – Germany didn’t legislate for left-hand drive until 1938 ……

3)Untangling the four Rings
The Audi badge comes from four separate German car companies, who all got in to financial trouble during the Great Depression and decided to merge in 1932. There was Horch and Audi, plus Wanderer and DKW, and they formed what became known as the Auto Union. The individual makes petered out during the build-up to World War Two, all except DKW, which enjoyed a resurgence in the post-war austerity years. in the 1960s a fifth company, NSU, was added; however, they couldn’t add a fifth ring to the badge, because that logo was already taken by a large sporting event.
Amazingly, the company name Audi-NSU-Auto-Union AG was only dropped in favor of the snappier ‘Audi AG’ as late as 1985.

Author: Sohaib Zahid