Take Audi's emblem, for example: four overlapping rings, but what do they represent? A few may hazard a guess at some reference to that other famous logo of rings, the Olympics, or suggest that it has some relevance to an engineering part. They'd be wrong.
The first of the rings on the Audi logo represents Audi itself. The company was founded in Germany in 1910 by August Horch. Having been forced out of the company he'd founded and lent his name to, Horch was denied permission to use his name for his new car company.
Struggling for ideas to name his new company, Horch met with a friend whose son suggested the name Audi. In his native German, the word "Horch" means "listen," to which the latin equivalent is "Audi." Horch would leave Audi in 1920 and the company was acquired by the owner of Dampf Kraft wagen (DKW). It is DKW that's represented by the second ring on the Audi emblem.
Owner of DKW, Jorgen Rasmussen also acquired the company in which Audi had it's personal beginnings: Horch. Along with Horch, the Danish engineer and industrialist Rasmussen also purchased failing US automobile manufacturer Rickenbacker and Wanderer. Wanderer was a German manufacturer of bicycles, motorcycles and automobiles.
1929 heralded the Great Depression and, in the same way as it has today, the economic downturn was punishing on a lot of automobile companies. Wanderer was forced to sell of its motorcycle division and the owner would later sell off the rest of the company.
In 1930, Jorgen Rasmussen merged his four automotive companies, to form the Auto Union, represented in the four rings of the emblem. The third and fourth rings belong to Horch and Wanderer.
With its beginnings rooted in the effects of the great depression the Auto Union became an important supplier of vehicles to the German armed forces with the outbreak of war seeing the company producing exclusively for military purposes. The plants were heavily bombed by Allied Forces and when the war was over, war reparations meant the dismantling of many plants.
In 1948 the Auto Union was deleted from the commercial register. It reformed and re-launched in Bavaira in 1949 producing front-wheel drive vehicles before being purchased by Daimler-Benz in 1958. The company was then bought by Volkswagen in 1964 and would merge with NSU, once the largest manufacturer of motorcycles, in 1969.
The newly merged company was known as Audi NSU Auto Union AG, with the emergence of Audi as a separate brand for the first time since the creation of Auto Union. The name was shortened in 1985 to Audi AG with each car continuing to sport the four rings of the Auto Union.
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