Archive for September, 2010
Audi is a car manufacturing company with a big history. The foundation of the company is on 14 November 1899. This is the date when August Horch (1868 – 1951) established the company A. Horch & Cie which was the starting point of Audi that we know today. This company was established in the Ehrenfeld district of Cologne where August Horch made his first car model. The car was finished during 1901 and in March of the next year the company was moved to Reichenbach in Saxony.
Two years later the company was converted to share-issuing company. During that time another change of location took place. On the same year – 10 May 1904 a company in Zwicka was established by the name A. Horch & Cie. Motorwagen-Werke AG.
It is interesting to know that right-hand drive originated from the age of horses where carriages were used. The coachman sat in the right-hand side of this vehicle and that was lately implemented in the first car model August Horch developed but later Audi were the first to offer another solution which came to be really better. This solution is the left-hand driving. The first car which uses the left-hand drive is called Audi Type K and this happened on 1921.
The year 1926 is really significant because during it the first eight-cylinder car was introduced by Horchwerke AG of Zwickau. The Horch was the name of that car and it was the first German eight-cylinder car to go into volume production. Paul Daimler designed the engine with double overhead camshafts. They were driven by shaft set vertically to the whole camshafts body. Two years later in 1928 the first DKW car appeared. That happened because Rasmussen finally got the powerful engine he needed. That engine is 600 cc, 15 hp in the form of two-cylinder motorcycle unit.
Rasmussen got the majority of shares in Audiwerke AG. in 1928 and he made the DKW small car be with front-wheel drive. It was later produced in large numbers in the same company. This event happened in 1931 and the car had a wooden body. An imitation of leather was made on the wooden body and the old two-stroke engine was used to power the car.
Audi, DKW, Horch and Wanderer got together on 29th June 1932 to create the new Auto Union AG. This was a pretty big event because these 4 brands were the Saxon car manufacturing giants. Together they made their head office in Chemnitz. In the next year – 1933 at the Berlin motor show Auto Union AG presented to the general public the first standard-size passenger car with front-wheel drive. For that car a six-cylinder engine was used.
A year after that a new design for a better aero dynamical appeal won a race and it greatly increased the popularity of Auto Union. The winning racing car was based on designs of Ferdinand Porsche. The six-cylinder engine was installed on the back side of the vehicle behind the driver. A new head office of the company was founded in Chemnitz in 1936. During the same year the whole manufacturing process was placed there too with the main facilities for design, development and testing.
In 1937 a speed of 400 km/h was exceeded by an Auto Union racing car. That world record proved that this company made the most of their cars – lightweight, extreme engine power of 545 horsepower and a fine aero dynamical design. Even today we talk with respect about such a high speed and we could only imagine what a high-tech product these cars were for their time.
In 1938 Auto Union AG were the first to make crash tests. Civilian production was interrupted because of the war in May 1940 and the company began production mainly for military purposes. In 1945 Auto Union was wiped from existence with the orders of the Soviet military administration in Germany. The plants were dismantled as reparations and all assets of the company were lost during that process. In 1948 the company was deleted from the Commercial Register and 17 August 1948 is stated as its last day.
On 3 September 1949 a new company was established by the name Auto Union GmbH in Ingolstadt. Some loans from the Bavarian state government and Marshall Plan made that possible. The production process started in the same year.
New world records were made and new designs were created. In 1991 design studies made possible for Audi quattro Spyder to occur and another good design with the name Audi Avus quattro.
In 1993 some aluminum elements made the cars more lightweight which was a tendency for many years.
A lot of people dream of owning a classic car. When you say classic, it means older-looking, classy and distinctive. There are many applications that can be used in defining a classic car but basically, a classic car is defined as famous for its excellent worksmanship, great engineering and elegant style built around the years 1925 to 1948.
This definition is actually almost the same as the description given by the Classic Car Club of America. Classic cars are special cars that were famous for their high-class worksmanship, fine design and sophisticated engineering standards. Generally, these classic cars were high-priced especially in their new conditions and they had limited production runs. There are certain factors to consider in determining a classic and these factors include the following: Engine displacement, custom coachwork and luxury accessories – one-shot lubrication systems, power brakes, power clutch, etc.
There’s an endless list of classics – from the brass era to those tough muscle cars of the 60s. You can easily find an array of pictures of the Dodge Charger, Mopar muscle cars, Plymouth Barracudas, a Chrysler Airflow and DeSotos. Other distinctive classics also include the Ford Model A, the Model T, the Classic Lincoln Continental or the Boss Mustang.
If you own one of these classics, you are definitely in luck because many of them hold such a premium value.. Today many people now see classics autos as an extremely sound investment since the value of these cars has nearly tripled in the last twenty years. As an example, the Chevelle, a popular muscle car from the 60s and 70s, was selling for $15-20,000 in the early 1990s. Today it is not uncommon to see it sell for well over $60,000 at many car auctions. This is why I always say that purchasing a classic car is akin to buying extremely valuable stock, without the worries.