The history of “Audi”: how it helped to develop the logo we have today?

At the end of the 19th century, the German car market began to develop, and a lot of talented mechanical engineers started chasing their dreams. One of them was August Horch, who established a brand new car manufacturing company called “A. Horch & Cie” in 1899. After ten years, a difference between his and other companies’ directors’ opinions made him leave the company. He managed to continue his journey and the same year one more was founded. Unfortunately, his last name “Horch” was already taken, so he decided to translate it into Latin, and that is how the name “Audi” was born.

“Audi” has been an extremely popular car brand since it was established in 1909. Ever since “Audi” cars entered the market, they were surprisingly demonstrating the perfect performance capabilities. Right after the first release, “Audi” cars managed to show astonishing results at the international Austrian Alpine Rally between 1912 – 1914. At that time it was enough to earn society’s attention.

The first official “Audi” logo appeared in the same year when the company was founded. The logo was depicted with a three-dimensional number “1” on the top of a sphere with a triangle under it. Later A. Horch told, that he clearly believed “Audi” cars are the future of the car market, so the number “1” in the logo hasn’t been chosen randomly. In 1910 the company decided to modernize the logo by changing the font of the letters. Regardless of that, the logo remained almost the same and was used until 1932.

In the late 20s, the global recession occurred and the economical situation became unfavorable for car manufacturers to develop. To avoid complete elimination from the market, in 1932 four large car manufacturing companies including “Audi” decided to merge into one by forming “Auto Union”. To represent the greatness of this new union, a famous logo with four rings was created. Each ring had an additional logo inside and it helped to show which companies merged. The brand-new logo remained until 1949 when logo badges inside the rings were removed. Instead of that, the company wanted to see the text “Auto Union” in the middle.

Later, in 1969 one more logo was created. This time it looked completely different. While all other famous German car manufacturers used circle-shaped logos, “Audi” decided to create something extraordinary and struck with a black oval-shaped logo. Inside the oval, the name “Audi” was placed. After 10 years the company decided to change the black color to red in order to make it more visible. It was the last time when the “Audi” logo wasn’t used as four merged rings. Since 1995 changes of the “Audi logo were very small, when finally in 2016 minimalistic black rings occurred.

Today “Audi” logos are still being widely used not only to decorate cars but also to mark the genuine “Audi” parts which are popular among “Audi” owners all around the world. While the “Audi” factories are still producing different parts, the majority of them can be easily found here: https://www.lllparts.co.uk/audi-parts.