While many other car manufacturers are posting depressive outlook for their businesses, Audi have some strong reasons to celebrate. At the end of 2008, the Audi A4 pushed out traditional favourite BMW 3-series as Germany's favourite premium sedan. It's not just the A4 that is making great strides. The A4's bigger brother, the A6 also trumped in its segment, beating the traditional favourites Mercedes E-class and BMW 5-series, or as the Germans like call it, E-klasse and 5er. The TT was also crowned Germany's best selling sports car.
According to data provided by Audi AG, 98,714 A4 were registered, while 45,304 A6 and 10,630 TT were registered in Germany. AUDI AG ended the year 2008 by selling a total of 1,003,000 cars. It also marks Audi's 13th consecutive year of record growth. In other words, Mercedes-Benz is no longer BMW's main competitor. But I would not read too much into it. There is direct no mention that these are all new vehicle registration figures and don't include pre-owned / ex-Audi registered company cars. Or how many of these are privately registered cars. Imagine if the entire senior management of VW Group uses Audi as their company cars. Pre-registration is quite a common practice among car manufacturers, particularly from premium brands to chase their sales target.
But still, these are not reasons to doubt Audi's coming of age. We can still accept one simple fact that the premium German luxury car market is no longer fought between BMW and Mercedes-Benz. The boys from Munich and Stuttgart will have to sit up and take notice that the boys from Ingolstadt are not just quirky geeks who likes to go on and on about diesel powered Le Mans racers and quattro AWD. Fanboys, especially those annoyingly loud and aggressive "alpha-male" BMW fans will of course disagree. But if there are people who choose to volunteer their service to do free PR for a company they don't own - well, whatever makes them happy man.
Come July 2009, Audi will also be celebrating its 100th anniversary. But with such a gloomy outlook for the global car industry, I highly doubt a high profile celebration is in the plan. However, Audi's own museum; the Audi's Museum Mobile in Germany, will be holding a special exhibition with the theme "From Horch to Audi – The history of perfection has a new name."
Highlights of the exhibit will include 1911 Audi Type A, the first car of the Auto Union-NSU "ancestry line" to bear an Audi badge.
Another highlight is an Audi made replica of an Audi Front 225 Special Roadster , shown for the first time modern history. Only 2 units the Special Roadster were built in 1935 and both has since been lost in time. Audi commissioned a replica to be built using an original chassis, with detailed old photographs as a guide to rebuild the body.
The exhibit will run from From March 11 to July 16, 2009.
Below is a glimpse of the Audi museum.
Audi has a very long and complicated history. In short, the Audi brand was established by August Horch on July 16 1909. Horch had earlier founded a company called Horch & Cie. Motorwagen Werke in 1902 but had to leave the company following a dispute. He could no longer register his new company using his name, thus he chose a Latin translation of Horch, (which means Listen). Thus giving birth to the Audi brand.
The four rings on Audi's logo symbolizes Audi, DKW, Horch and Wanderer, which were combined to form Auto Union in 1932. Auto Union and another the partly VW owned company, NSU merged in 1969, resulting in a new company called Audi NSU Auto Union AG. The company would later be renamed Audi AG in 1985.
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