Auto Union


Auto Union 'AG' was an amalgamation of four German automobile manufacturers, founded in 1932 and established in 1936 in Chemnitz, Saxony. It is the immediate predecessor of Audi as it is known today.
As well as acting as an umbrella firm for its four constituent brands, Auto Union is widely known for its racing team. The Silver Arrows of the two German teams dominated not only Grand Prix motor racing from 1934 onwards but set records that would take decades to beat, such as the fastest speed ever attained on a public road, a record lasting until 2017. After being reduced to near ruin in the aftermath of World War II, Auto Union was re-founded in Ingolstadt, Bavaria, in 1949, ultimately evolving into the modern day Audi company following its takeover by Volkswagen in 1964 and later merger with NSU Motorenwerke in 1969.
The current corporate entity which bears the Auto Union name, Auto Union GmbH, was founded in 1985 and is a wholly owned subsidiary of Audi AG; its purpose is to act as owner of Auto Union's historical trademarks and intellectual property, as well as managing Audi's heritage operations. The company's distinctive logo of four interlocking rings to represent the original four members of the Auto Union survives as the logo of Audi.

Formation

Auto Union was formed in Germany in 1932 merging:
  • Zschopauer Motorenwerke J. S. Rasmussen founded by Danish engineer Jørgen Skafte Rasmussen in 1916, it branched out into motorcycles, and then front-drive two-stroke cars built at Audi works in Zwickau since 1931.
  • Horch – founded 1904 by August Horch in Zwickau. It built cars starting from straight-twin engines to luxury models with V8- and V12 engines.
  • Audi – because of disputes with the CFO, August Horch in 1909 left his namesake enterprise and founded Audi across town, building inline-four-, six- and eight-cylinder-engined cars. In 1928 Audi became a subsidiary of Zschopauer Motorenwerke.
  • Wanderer – founded in 1911, with small four-cylinder cars and later a more luxurious straight-6 built in Siegmar
In August 1928, Rasmussen, the owner of DKW, acquired a majority ownership of Audiwerke AG. In the same year, Rasmussen bought the remains of the US automobile manufacturer Rickenbacker, including the manufacturing equipment for eight- and six-cylinder engines. These engines were used in Audi Zwickau, Audi Imperator and Audi Dresden models. At the same time, six-cylinder and four-cylinder models were manufactured.
In 1930 the Saxony Regional Bank, which had financed Rasmussen's business expansion in the 1920s, installed Richard Bruhn on the board of Audiwerke AG, and there followed a brutal pruning and rationalization of the various auto-businesses that Rasmussen had accumulated. The outcome was the founding in Summer 1932 of Auto Union AG with just four component businesses, being Zschopauer Motorenwerke with its brand DKW, Audi, Horch and the car producing piece of Wanderer, brought together under the umbrella of single shareholder company Auto Union. Although all four brands continued to sell cars under their own names and brands, the technological development became more centralized, with some Audi models employing engines by Horch or Wanderer.

The Auto Union racing cars

Background

Auto Union chairman, Klaus, Baron von Oertzen, wanted a showpiece project to announce the new brand. At the 1933 Berlin Motor Show, German Chancellor Adolf Hitler announced two new programs:
  • The people's car : a project that became the KdF car – the "Strength through Joy" car
  • A state-sponsored motor racing programme: to develop a "high speed German automotive industry," the foundation of which would be an annual sum of
At fellow director's Adolf Rosenberger insistence, von Oertzen met with Dr. Ferdinand Porsche, who had done work for him before, and developed his own P-Wagen project racing car based on the new formula.
German racing driver Hans Stuck Sr. had met Hitler before he became Chancellor, and not being able to gain a seat at Mercedes, accepted the invitation of Rosenberger to join him, von Oertzen, and Porsche in approaching the Chancellor. In a meeting in the Reich Chancellory, Hitler agreed with Porsche that for the glory of Germany, it would be better for two companies to develop the project, resulting in Hitler agreeing to pay £40,000 for the country's best racing car of 1934, as well as an annual stipend of each for Mercedes and Auto Union. This highly annoyed Mercedes, who had already developed their Mercedes-Benz W25; nevertheless, Mercedes was gratified, its racing program having financial difficulties since 1931. It resulted in a heated exchange both on and off the racing track between the two companies until World War II.
Having garnered state funds, Auto Union bought Porsche's Hochleistungsfahrzeugbau GmbH and hence the P-Wagen Project for, relocating the company to Auto Union's Horch plant at Zwickau.

Design

The Auto Union racing cars types A to D were built as Grand Prix racing cars from 1934 to 1939. They resembled the earlier Benz Tropfenwagen, also built in part by Rumpler engineers, The only Grand Prix racers to wear Auto Union's four-ringed logo, they were particularly dominant in 1936. From 1935 to 1937, Auto Union cars car won 25 races, driven by Ernst von Delius, Bernd Rosemeyer, Hans Stuck Sr., and Achille Varzi. Much has been written about the difficult handling characteristics of this car, but its tremendous power and acceleration were undeniable – a driver could induce wheelspin at over.
The cars used supercharged piston engines; eventually producing almost, designed to provide optimum torque at low engine speeds. Rosemeyer would later drive one around the Nürburgring in a single gear, to prove the engine was flexible enough to do it. Unlike its rivals, it had a rear mid-engine, rear-wheel-drive layout. The fuel tank was located in the centre of the car, directly behind the driver, so the car's front-rear weight distribution would remain unchanged as fuel was used – exactly the same location used in modern open-wheel racing cars, and for the same reason. The chassis tubes were initially used as water carriers from the radiator to the engine, but this was eventually abandoned after they often sprung small leaks.

Racing results

The list of drivers for the initial 1934 season was headed by Stuck; he won the German, Swiss, and Czechoslovakian events, along with wins in a number of hill climbs, becoming European Mountain Champion.
In 1935, the engine had been enlarged to displacement, producing. Achille Varzi joined the team and won the Tunis Grand Prix and the Coppa Acerbo. Stuck won the Italian Grand Prix, plus his usual collection of hill-climb wins, again taking the European Mountain Championship. The new sensation, Rosemeyer, won the Czech Grand Prix.
Stuck also managed to break speed records, reaching on an Italian autostrada in a closed-cockpit streamliner. Lessons learned from this streamlining were later applied to the T80 land speed record car.
For 1936, the engine had grown to a full, and was now producing ; in the hands of Rosemeyer and his teammates, the Auto Union Type C dominated the racing world. Rosemeyer won the Eifelrennen, German, Swiss, and Italian Grands Prix, as well as the Coppa Acerbo. He was crowned European Champion, and also took the European Mountain Championship. Varzi won the Tripoli Grand Prix, while Stuck placed second in the Tripoli and German Grands Prix, and Ernst von Delius took second in the Coppa Acerbo.
In 1937, the car was basically unchanged and did surprisingly well against the new Mercedes-Benz W125, winning five races to the seven of Mercedes-Benz. Rosemeyer took the Eifel and Donington Grands Prix, the Coppa Acerbo, and the Vanderbilt Cup. Rudolf Hasse won the Belgian Grand Prix.
In addition to the new formula, 1938 brought other challenges, principally the death of Rosemeyer early in the year, in an attempt on the land speed record on a German autobahn. Tazio Nuvolari joined the team, and won the Italian and Donington Grands Prix, in what was otherwise a thin year for the team, other than yet another European Mountain Championship for Stuck.
In 1939, as war clouds gathered over Europe, Nuvolari won the Yugoslavia Grand Prix in Belgrade, while Hermann P. Müller won the 1939 French Grand Prix.

Second World War

The buildup and onset of World War II encouraged the development and production of special vehicles for military purposes in the 1930s. Auto Union became an important supplier of vehicles to Germany's armed forces. Following the outbreak of war, civilian production was interrupted in May 1940. After this, the company produced exclusively for military purposes.
For the production of Junkers aircraft engine under license, Auto Union founded in 1935 the subsidiary "Mitteldeutsche Motorenwerke" at Taucha, northeast of Leipzig.
During World War II, Auto Union/Horch supplied the chassis for the Sd.Kfz. 222 armored car. Powered by an Horch V8 engine, it reached a top speed of on the road. The all-wheel drive Kfz. 11, or Horch/Wanderer Type 901, was used as a medium transport vehicle to shuttle German military officials. Horch works also produced the AWD heavy transport vehicle Type 801.
From the beginning of 1944, Auto Union plants were heavily bombed and severely damaged. The U.S. Army occupied Zwickau on 17 April 1945 near the end of WWII. After withdrawal of the U.S. Army on 30 June from Zwickau, all Saxon plants of Auto Union were occupied by the Red Army.
The company exploited slave labor at Leitmeritz concentration camp. According to a 2014 report commissioned by the company, Auto Union bore "moral responsibility" for the 4,500 deaths that occurred at Leitmeritz.

East Germany

Postwar, the Saxon plants of Auto Union were located in the Soviet-occupied zone of communist East Germany.
In 1945, on the orders of the Soviet Military Administration in Germany, the factories were dismantled as war reparations, while the racing cars found stored in a colliery were returned to Moscow for reverse engineering. Following this, Auto Union AG assets were liquidated without compensation. On 17 August 1948, Auto Union AG of Chemnitz was deleted from the commercial register. The remains of Horch and Audi plants of Zwickau became the VEB Automobilwerk Zwickau, or AWZ;.
The former Audi factory in Zwickau, now under East German control, restarted assembly of the pre-war models in 1949. Those models were renamed IFA F8 and IFA F9 and were similar to the new West German DKW versions. In time, a lawsuit compelled the East Germans to cease using the DKW brand. The site became the home of VEB Sachsenring in the 1950s, which manufactured the infamous Trabant. After the reunification of Germany in 1990, Volkswagen took a controlling interest in the old VEB Sachsenring organization, creating the new subsidiary Volkswagen Sashsen GmbH, operating initially out of what were the historic Auto Union sites in Zwickau and Chemnitz, which were both eventually rebuilt – in 1993 a new factory was constructed in Zwickau in nearby Mosel, which in 2021 became the centre of production for the Volkswagen Group MEB platform vehicles – notably the Audi Q4 e-tron – making it the first Audi to be manufactured at Zwickau since the pre-war era.
Audi also established the August Horch Museum in 2004 within the surviving factory buildings in Zwickau which dated back to the historic Horch and Audi companies of the 1900s. The museum charts the early histories of Audi, Horch and Auto Union leading up to the company's reestablishment in Ingolstadt after WW2.