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AUDI
AUDI
Car Design History - Automobile manufacturer
Audi
began working secretly on the development of the Audi 100 during
the 1960s, unbeknownst to its parent company Volkswagen.
Decisions concerning the development of new models by the ailing subsidiary
would normally have been made in Wolfsburg. But everything turned out
for the best. The VW board liked the car, and Audi rose like a phoenix
from the ashes. Until then the name of Audi was hardly known, even though
the company had been in existence for over fifty years as part of Auto
Union, a conglomerate of Saxony car manufacturer s that included Audi,
DKW, and Wanderer. The famous Audi logo of four interwined
rings was originally a symbol representing the four members of Audi Union.
After
the Second World War, Auto Union began to develop two-stroke engines under
the DKW name, but low sales threatened its future survival. This was followed
by a six-year interlude under the wing of Mercedes, until
Volkswagen took over the supposedly unsalable stock. At the end of the
1960s, VW also absorbed the motorcycle and car manufacturer NSU.
The NSU range included the little Prinz models, the work of the
company's designer Claus Luthe, one of the pioneers of
German car design who lare worked for Volkswagen and BMW.
In 1967, Luthe caused a sensation at the Frankfurt Motor Show with the
NSU RO 80, the first automobile with a Wankel rotary engine. As well as
being remarkable technically, the RO 80 was also an aesthetic pioneer,
with its flat hood, rising waistline and short tail. This wedge shape,
frequetly updated by Luthe himself, heralded a new trend in car design
that servived well into the 1990s. By then the innovative NSU manufacturer
had long vanished, and the number of RO 80s manufacturer was less then
40,000.
Audi
would probably have disappeared as well had it not been for the amazing
success of the Audi 100, a car which appealed to the rising middle
class. The smaller Audi 80 soon followed. In the early 1980s,
Audi developed a car with permanent four-wheel drive, the Audi 80
Quattro, the first of a new model range. Most Audi models were still
very conventional, apart from the Quattro models which had a
spoiler reminiscent of competition cars. This spoiler was integrated into
the front bumper, pointing to a future trend, but apart from this the
characteristic shape of the car was unchanged. During the 1980s, Audi
made no dramatic design changes but refined every detail. For example,
the Audi 80, launched in 1986, had a flush-fitting windshield
above a raised hood that concealed the windscreen wiper pivots, sunken
door handles, a relatively small roof area, and very compact, smooth silhouette.
This hard work paid off: the car had the remarkably low drag coefficient
(Cd) of 0.29.
"The
criticism that all cars look alike has been around for many years"
says Peter Schreyer. "I believe there is a strong
trend towards changing this." Schreyer has contributed very substantially
to ending the long years of boredom. He is one of the leading contemporary
car designers and has been head of design at Audi since the mid-1990s,
where he has made sure that matters of design are at the very top of the
Audi list of priorities. This has greatly improved the company's image,
and it has also led to vastly increased sales figures. The new flagships
are the A4 and A6, the successors to the Audi 80
and Audi 100.
When
Audi launched the entirely revamped A6 at the end of the 1990s,
its character was still related to its predecessor, but the overall impression
of the car had completely changed. There are some obvious differences:
for instance, the wheelbase is longer and the front and back overhangs
are shorter. The higher rear lights and the soft, rounded lines of the
back of the car contribute to its innovative appearance, which has quickly
become accepted. The whole body is rounded with flowing lines. With its
dome like roof, bow-shaped rear, and rounded nose, this car marks a new
era in car design, replacing the box and wedge shapes. It was only a question
of time before the station wagon version of the A4 won the highly
regarded Bundespreis (Federal prize) for product design. Audi shocked
the competition again when it launched the TT Coupe, a powerful
machine that started life as a design study. In this category too, Audi
has created a new icon whose contemporary aesthetic image is completely
convincing. As Schreyer candidly states: "In design one must have
a revolution from time to time."
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AUDI
Car History
AUDI
AG,
Ingolstadt
|
| 1909 |
August
Horch founds Audi in Zwickau |
| 1925 |
German
crown prince buys M sedan |
| 1928 |
automobile
manufacturer DKW buys Audi |
| 1932 |
Audi,
DKW, Horch and Wanderer from Audi Union with headquarters in Chemnitz
(new logo: four rings) |
| 1958 |
Mercedes
takes over Auto Union |
| 1959 |
factory
in Ingolstadt |
| 1965 |
VW
acwuires shares an Auto Union (1966 100% subsidiary) |
| 1969 |
Auto
Union merges with NSU (Claus Luthe
designer since 1956) |
| 1993 |
Audi
AG becomes a marque with its own management |
| 1994 |
Peter
Schreyer becomes chief designer |
| 1996 |
German
Government Product Design Prize for A4 Avant station
wagon |
| 1998
|
takeover
of automobile companies Cosworth and Lamborghini |
| 1999 |
Design
team of the year (NRW design centre) |
AUDI
Car Models History |
| 1912 |
C
"Alpine winner" open sedan |
| 1925 |
M
sedan |
| 1928 |
R
Imperator luxury sedan |
| 1933 |
Front
sedan |
| 1965 |
Audi
100 sedan |
| 1967 |
NSU
Ro 80 sedan |
| 1969 |
Audi
100 Coupe |
| 1972 |
Audi
80 sedan by Bertone |
| 1982 |
Audi
Quattro sprts sedan |
| 1986 |
Audi
80 new generation |
| 1994 |
A4
and A6 model range |
| 1996 |
A3
model range |
| 1997 |
TT
Coupe launched in Japan (1998 in Germany) |
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