PROJECT TASK FOR FINAL EXAMINATION IN THE ENGLISH

LANGUAGE

TOPIC : AUDI

MADE BY : MENTOR :
Влатко Стојаноски проф. Катерина Видова
2082014

Битола ,2021
 Content

Introduction …………………………….……………………………………….... 3
History …………………………….…………………………………………….... 4
Birth of the company and its name ……………………………………………….. 4
New Auto Union unit ………………….………………………………………..… 5
Modern era ……………………………………………………………………..…. 6
Audi AG today ……………………………………………………………………. 7
Motorsport ………………………………………………………………………… 8
Rallying ……………………………………………………………………………. 8
Touring cars ……………………………………………………………………….. 9
Marketing ………………………………………………………………………… 10
In video games …………………………………………………………………..... 11
Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………….... 12
Used literature …………………………………………………………………..… 13

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 Introduction

Audi AG (German: [ˈaʊ̯di ʔaːˈɡeː] (About this soundlisten)) is a German

automobile manufacturer that designs, engineers, produces, markets and distributes
luxury vehicles. Audi is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Volkswagen Group and has
its roots at Ingolstadt, Bavaria, Germany. Audi-branded vehicles are produced in nine
production facilities worldwide.
The origins of the company are complex, going back to the early 20th century
and the initial enterprises (Horch and the Audiwerke) founded by engineer August
Horch; and two other manufacturers (DKW and Wanderer), leading to the foundation
of Auto Union in 1932. The modern era of Audi essentially began in the 1960s when
Auto Union was acquired by Volkswagen from Daimler-Benz.
After relaunching the Audi brand with the 1965 introduction of the Audi F103
series, Volkswagen merged Auto Union with NSU Motorenwerke in 1969, thus
creating the present day form of the company.
The company name is based on the Latin translation of the surname of the
founder, August Horch. "Horch", meaning "listen" in German, becomes "audi" in
Latin.
The four rings of the Audi logo each represent one of four car companies that
banded together to create Audi's predecessor company, Auto Union. Audi's slogan is
Vorsprung durch Technik, meaning "Being Ahead through Technology". Audi, along
with fellow German marques BMW and Mercedes-Benz, is among the best-selling
luxury automobile brands in the world.

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 History

Birth of the company and its name

Automobile company Wanderer was originally established in 1885, later

becoming a branch of Audi AG. Another company, NSU, which also later merged
into Audi, was founded during this time, and later supplied the chassis for Gottlieb
Daimler's four-wheeler.
On 14 November 1899, August Horch (1868–1951) established the
company A. Horch & Cie. in the Ehrenfeld district of Cologne. In 1902, he moved
with his company to Reichenbach im Vogtland. On 10 May 1904, he founded
the August Horch & Cie. Motorwagenwerke AG, a joint-stock company
in Zwickau (State of Saxony).1
After troubles with Horch chief financial officer, August Horch left
Motorwagenwerke and founded in Zwickau on 16 July 1909, his second company,
the August Horch Automobilwerke GmbH. His former partners sued him for
trademark infringement. The German Reichsgericht (Supreme Court)
in Leipzig, eventually determined that the Horch brand belonged to his former
company.
Since August Horch was prohibited from using "Horch" as a trade name in his
new car business, he called a meeting with close business friends, Paul and Franz
Fikentscher from Zwickau. At the apartment of Franz Fikentscher, they discussed
how to come up with a new name for the company. During this meeting, Franz's son
was quietly studying Latin in a corner of the room. Several times he looked like he
was on the verge of saying something but would just swallow his words and continue
working, until he finally blurted out, "Father – audiatur et altera pars... wouldn't it be a
good idea to call it audi instead of horch?" "Horch!" in German means "Hark!" or
"hear", which is "Audi" in the singular imperative form of "audire" – "to listen" – in
Latin. The idea was enthusiastically accepted by everyone attending the meeting. On
25 April 1910 the Audi Automobilwerke GmbH Zwickau (from 1915 on Audiwerke
AG Zwickau) was entered in the company's register of Zwickau registration court.

1
"The history of AUDI AG".

4
 1923 Audi Type E

New Auto Union unit

A new West German headquartered Auto Union was launched in Ingolstadt

with loans from the Bavarian state government and Marshall Plan aid.[23] The
reformed company was launched 3 September 1949 and continued DKW's tradition of
producing front-wheel drive vehicles with two-stroke engines.[23] This included
production of a small but sturdy 125 cc motorcycle and a DKW delivery van, the
DKW F89 L at Ingolstadt.
The Ingolstadt site was large, consisting of an extensive complex of formerly military
buildings which was suitable for administration as well as vehicle warehousing and
distribution, but at this stage there was at Ingolstadt no dedicated plant suitable for
mass production of automobiles: for manufacturing the company's first post-war
mass-market passenger car plant capacity in Düsseldorf was rented from Rheinmetall-
Borsig. It was only ten years later, after the company had attracted an investor, when
funds became available for construction of major car plant at the Ingolstadt head
office site.
In 1958, in response to pressure from Friedrich Flick, then the company's
largest single shareholder,Daimler-Benz took an 87% holding in the Auto Union
company, and this was increased to a 100% holding in 1959. However, small two-
stroke cars were not the focus of Daimler-Benz's interests, and while the early 1960s
saw major investment in new Mercedes models and in a state of the art factory for
Auto Union's, the company's aging model range at this time did not benefit from the
economic boom of the early 1960s to the same extent as competitor manufacturers
such as Volkswagen and Opel.

5
 Modern era

The new merged company was incorporated on 1 January 1969 and was
known as Audi NSU Auto Union AG, with its headquarters at NSU's Neckarsulm
plant, and saw the emergence of Audi as a separate brand for the first time since the
pre-war era. Volkswagen introduced the Audi brand to the United States for the 1970
model year. That same year, the mid-sized car that NSU had been working on,
the K70, originally intended to slot between the rear-engined Prinz models and the
futuristic NSU Ro 80, was instead launched as a Volkswagen.2
After the launch of the Audi 100 of 1968, the Audi 80/Fox (which formed the
basis for the 1973 Volkswagen Passat) followed in 1972 and the Audi 50 (later
rebadged as the Volkswagen Polo) in 1974. The Audi 50 was a seminal design
because it was the first incarnation of the Golf/Polo concept, one that led to a hugely
successful world car. Ultimately, the Audi 80 and 100 (progenitors of the A4 and A6,
respectively) became the company's biggest sellers, whilst little investment was made
in the fading NSU range; the Prinz models were dropped in 1973 whilst the fatally
flawed NSU Ro80 went out of production in 1977, spelling the effective end of the
NSU brand.3 Production of the Audi 100 had been steadily moved from Ingolstadt to
Neckarsulm as the 1970s had progressed, and by the appearance of the second
generation C2 version in 1976, all production was now at the former NSU plant.
Neckarsulm from that point onward would produce Audi's higher end models.

Audi Quattro

2
"The history of AUDI AG".
3
https://www.autoevolution.com/audi/

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 Audi AG today

Audi's sales grew strongly in the 2000s, with deliveries to customers

increasing from 653,000 in 2000 to 1,003,000 in 2008. The largest sales increases
came from Eastern Europe (+19.3%), Africa (+17.2%) and the Middle East (+58.5%).
China in particular has become a key market, representing 108,000 out of 705,000
cars delivered in the first three quarters of 2009. One factor for its popularity in China
is that Audis have become the car of choice for purchase by the Chinese government
for officials, and purchases by the government are responsible for 20% of its sales in
China.
As of late 2009, Audi's operating profit of €1.17 billion ($1.85 billion) made it
the biggest contributor to parent Volkswagen Group's nine-month operating profit of
€1.5 billion, while the other marques in Group such as Bentley and SEAT had
suffered considerable losses.
 May 2011 saw record sales for Audi of America with the new Audi
A7 and Audi A3 TDI Clean Diesel. In May 2012, Audi reported a 10% increase in its
sales—from 408 units to 480 in the last year alone.4
Audi manufactures vehicles in seven plants around the world, some of which are
shared with other VW Group marques although many sub-assemblies such as engines
and transmissions are manufactured within other Volkswagen Group plants.
In November 2015, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency implicated the
3-liter diesel engine versions of the 2016 Audi A6 Quattro, A7 Quattro, A8, A8L and
the Q5 as further models that had emissions regulation defeat-device software
installed. Thus, these models emitted nitrogen oxide at up to nine times the legal limit
when the car detected that it was not hooked up to emissions testing equipment.
In February 2020, Volkswagen AG announced that it plans to take over all
Audi shares it does not own (totalling 0.36%) via a squeeze-out according to German
stock corporation law, thus making Audi a fully owned subsidiary of the Volkswagen
Group. This change took effect from 16 November 2020, when Audi became a wholly
owned subsidiary of the Volkswagen Group.

4
https://www.autoevolution.com/audi/

7
 Motorsport

Audi has competed in various forms of motorsports. Audi's tradition in

motorsport began with their former company Auto Union in the 1930s. In the 1990s,
Audi found success in the Touring and Super Touring categories of motor racing after
success in circuit racing in North America.

Rallying

In 1980, Audi released the Quattro, a four-wheel drive (4WD) turbocharged

car that went on to win rallies and races worldwide. It is considered one of the most
significant rally cars of all time, because it was one of the first to take advantage of
the then-recently changed rules which allowed the use of four-wheel drive in
competition racing. 5
Many critics doubted the viability of four-wheel drive racers, thinking them to
be too heavy and complex, yet the Quattro was to become a successful car. Leading
its first rally it went off the road, however the rally world had been served notice
4WD was the future. The Quattro went on to achieve much success in the World
Rally Championship. It won the 1983 (Hannu Mikkola) and the 1984 (Stig
Blomqvist) drivers' titles,and brought Audi the manufacturers' title in 1982 and 1984.

Walter Röhrl with his Quattro A2 during the 1984 Rally Portugal

5
https://www.autoevolution.com/audi/

8
 Touring cars

In 1990, having completed their objective to market cars in North America,

Audi returned to Europe, turning first to the Deutsche Tourenwagen
Meisterschaft (DTM) series with the Audi V8, and then in 1993, being unwilling to
build cars for the new formula, they turned their attention to the fast-growing Super
Touring series, which are a series of national championships. Audi first entered in
the French Supertourisme and Italian Superturismo. In the following year, Audi
would switch to the German Super Tourenwagen Cup (known as STW), and then
to British Touring Car Championship (BTCC) the year after that.
The Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), having difficulty
regulating the quattro four-wheel drive system, and the impact it had on the
competitors, would eventually ban all four-wheel drive cars from competing in the
series in 1998 but by then, Audi switched all their works efforts to sports car racing.6
By 2000, Audi would still compete in the US with their RS4 for the SCCA
Speed World GT Challenge, through dealer/team Champion Racing competing
against Corvettes, Vipers, and smaller BMWs (where it is one of the few series to
permit 4WD cars). In 2003, Champion Racing entered an RS6. Once again, the
quattro four-wheel drive was superior, and Champion Audi won the championship.
They returned in 2004 to defend their title, but a newcomer, Cadillac with the new
Omega Chassis CTS-V, gave them a run for their money. After four victories in a
row, the Audis were sanctioned with several negative changes that deeply affected the
car's performance. Namely, added ballast weights, and Champion Audi deciding to go
with different tyres, and reducing the boost pressure of the turbocharger.
In 2004, after years of competing with the TT-R in the revitalised DTM series,
with privateer team Abt Racing/Christian Abt taking the 2002 title with Laurent
Aïello, Audi returned as a full factory effort to touring car racing by entering two
factory supported Joest Racing A4 DTM cars.

6
Audi History Archived 9 February 2010 at the Wayback Machine audiusa.com

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 Marketing

The Audi emblem is four overlapping rings that represent the four marques of
Auto Union. The Audi emblem symbolises the amalgamation of Audi with DKW,
Horch and Wanderer: the first ring from the left represents Audi, the second
represents DKW, third is Horch, and the fourth and last ring Wanderer.
The design is popularly believed to have been the idea of Klaus von Oertzen,
the director of sales at Wanderer – when Berlin was chosen as the host city for the
1936 Summer Olympics and that a form of the Olympic logo symbolized the newly
established Auto Union's desire to succeed. Somewhat ironically, the International
Olympic Committee later sued Audi in the International Trademark Court in 1995,
where they lost.
The original "Audi" script, with the distinctive slanted tails on the "A" and "d"
was created for the historic Audi company in 1920 by the famous graphic designer
Lucian Bernhard, and was resurrected when Volkswagen revived the brand in 1965.
Following the demise of NSU in 1977, less prominence was given to the four
rings, in preference to the "Audi" script encased within a black (later red) ellipse, and
was commonly displayed next to the Volkswagen roundel when the two brands shared
a dealer network under the V.A.G banner. The ellipse (known as the Audi Oval) was
phased out after 1994, when Audi formed its own independent dealer network, and
prominence was given back to the four rings – at the same time Audi Sans (a
derivative of Univers) was adopted as the font for all marketing materials, corporate
communications and was also used in the vehicles themselves.

The logo used by Audi, 1985–2009

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 As part of Audi's centennial celebration in 2009, the company updated the
logo, changing the font to left-aligned Audi Type, and altering the shading for the
overlapping rings.The revised logo was designed by Rayan Abdullah.7
Audi developed a Corporate Sound concept, with Audi Sound Studio designed
for producing the Corporate Sound.
The Corporate Sound project began with sound agency Klangerfinder GmbH
& Co KG and s12 GmbH. Audio samples were created in Klangerfinder's sound
studio in Stuttgart, becoming part of Audi Sound Studio collection. Other Audi Sound
Studio components include The Brand Music Pool, The Brand Voice. Audi also
developed Sound Branding Toolkit including certain instruments, sound themes,
rhythm and car sounds which all are supposed to reflect the AUDI sound character.

In video games

Audi has supported the European version of PlayStation Home, the

PlayStation 3's online community-based service, by releasing a dedicated Home
space. Audi is the first carmaker to develop such a space for Home. On 17 December
2009, Audi released two spaces; the Audi Home Terminal and the Audi Vertical Run.
The Audi Home Terminal features an Audi TV channel delivering video
content, an Internet Browser feature, and a view of a city. The Audi Vertical Run is
where users can access the mini-game Vertical Run, a futuristic mini-game featuring
Audi's e-tron concept. Players collect energy and race for the highest possible speeds
and the fastest players earn a place in the Audi apartments located in a large tower in
the centre of the Audi Space. In both the Home Terminal and Vertical Run spaces,
there are teleports where users can teleport back and forth between the two spaces.
Audi had stated that additional content would be added in 2010.8
On 31 March 2015 Sony shutdown the PlayStation Home service rendering all
content for it inaccessible.

7
Audi History Archived 9 February 2010 at the Wayback Machine audiusa.com
8
https://www.caranddriver.com/audi

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 Conclusion

Audi is one of today's most successful luxury brands, having effectively

leveraged its minimalist styling and Quattro all-wheel-drive system into a compelling
image of modernity and innovation. Its lineup consists of extremely competent
vehicles, most of which—such as the A4 sedan and Q7 SUV—are so uniformly good
at everything that they can almost feel cold and clinical.
That criticism extends even to the sportier and more powerful S-line and RS
variants such as the 444-hp RS5 Sportback four-door coupe and the R8 supercar. In
spite of its forward-looking image, Audi is only now starting to add mild-hybrid
powertrains throughout its lineup, and sells only one fully electric vehicle, the e-tron.
Automobiles undoubtedly fall into the latter category, and what better way of
striking at least one of the remaining three senses if not building an image of a mighty
engine roar or purr of a loyal cylinder sextet cradled under the bonnet of an Audi car?
Audi translates as 'listen' from latin and besides expressing an unanimously
accepted passion of the motorist, that of listening to the engine as if it were a never
before heard dissertation on mechanics blended with boisterous 'deux ex machina'
comments and demonstrations, it also marks the birth of Audi following Horch's
demise, the previous name of the company that can be traced back to 1899.
Joining a row of successful car-producers, Audi has also garnered acclaim on
the racing track with several World Record holdings, including one for Top Speed
Endurance. Audi is currently enjoying a privileged position and large market share
and is predicted to reach the production threshold of 1 million units by the end of this
year.

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 Used literature

1. "The history of AUDI AG".

2. https://www.autoevolution.com/audi/
3.  Audi History Archived 9 February 2010 at the Wayback Machine audiusa.com
4. https://www.caranddriver.com/audi

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