Audi

AUDI AG (Xetra: NSU) is a German company which produces cars under the Audi brand, pronounced /ˈaʊdi/. It is part of the Volkswagen Group. The name Audi is based on a Latin translation of the surname of the founder August Horch, itself the German word for “listen!"
Audi is headquartered in Ingolstadt, Bavaria, Germany.
It has been a wholly-owned (99.55%) subsidiary of the Volkswagen Group (Volkswagen AG) since 1964. Volkswagen Group relaunched the Audi brand with the 1965 introduction of the Audi 60/72/75/80/Super 90 range (sold in certain export markets simply as the "Audi") shortly after the name was acquired as part of Volkswagen's purchase of the Auto Union assets from former owner, Daimler-Benz.

Type	Private company, subsidiary of Volkswagen Group (FWB Xetra: NSU)
Founded	Zwickau, Germany on July 16, 1909 [1]
Founder(s)	August Horch
Headquarters	Ingolstadt, Germany
Number of locations	production locations: Germany: Ingolstadt & Neckarsulm; Hungary: Győr; Belgium: Brussels;; China: Changchun; India: Aurangabad
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Rupert Stadler Chairman of the Board of Management, Martin Winterkorn Chairman of the Supervisory Board (Volkswagen AG)
Industry	Automotive industry
Products	Automobiles, Engines
Revenue	▲ € 33.617 billion (2007) [2]
Profit	▲ € 2.915 billion (2007)
Total equity	37.0%[citation needed]
Employees	53,347 (2007)
Subsidiaries	quattro GmbH, Lamborghini S.p.A., Audi Hungaria Motor Kft
Website	Audi.com

Birth of the company and its name

Audi Type E

The company traces its origins back to 1899 and August Horch. The first Horch automobile was produced in 1901 in Zwickau.^[3] In 1909, Horch was forced out of the company he had founded.^[3] He then started a new company in Zwickau and continued using the Horch brand^[4]
His former partners sued him for trademark infringement and a German court determined that the Horch brand belonged to his former company.^[3] August Horch was barred from using his own family name in his new car business, so he called a meeting at the apartment of Franz Fikentscher to come up with a new name for his 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 Latin (compare audible). The idea was enthusiastically accepted by everyone attending the meeting.^[5] It is sometimes incorrectly said that AUDI is a acronym which stands for "Auto Union Deutschland Ingolstadt", but this is merely a clever backronym and not the true origin of the company name.

Logos

The Audi emblem is four overlapping rings that represent the four marques of Auto Union. The Audi emblem symbolizes the amalgamation of Audi with DKW, Horch and Wanderer: the first ring represents Audi, the second represents DKW, third is Horch, and the fourth and last ring Wanderer.^[22][23] Its similarity to the Olympic rings caused the International Olympic Committee to sue Audi in Rochester, MN small claims Court in 1995.^[24]
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.^[25]

Slogans

Audi's corporate tagline is Vorsprung durch Technik, meaning "Progress through Technology".^[26] The German-language tagline is used in many European countries, including the United Kingdom, and in other markets, such as Latin America, Oceania and parts of Asia including Japan. A few years ago, the North American tagline was "Innovation through technology", but in Canada the German tagline Vorsprung durch Technik was used in advertising. More recently, however, Audi has updated the tagline to "Truth in Engineering" in the U.S.