History of the Audi logo
The history of the Audi logo is quite funny.
In 1899, August Horch founded the "Horch-Werke" (Horch Industries). There were internal disagreements and financial problems, and August Horch left the company.
He founded a new company in 1909, which he named "Audi" because he wasn't allowed to use "Horch" anymore.
However, "Audi" was nothing else than the latin translation of "listen!", which, in german vernacular speech is sometimes pronounced "horch" (high german: "hör zu").
At the time of founding, the Audi logo had little in common with today's logo. It was the writing of Audi (which is still used sometimes today) in a v-shape triangle. On top of it was the number 1 on a hemisphere.
In 1904, a certain Mr. Rasmussen and his partner founded a company named Rasmussen & Ernst, which started to produce various car parts (such as mudguards) in 1912. The company was later renamed to DKW (Dampf-Kraft-Wagen; steam driven cars) because of their attempts to build such steam driven cars.
At about the same time, a company named "Wanderer" also existed. It primarily sold bicycles, but later expanded and in 1913 also built passenger cars.
At the end of the 20s, the global economic crisis pressed all these companies, and they decided to consolidate. The "Audi Union AG was born.
A new logo was designed for the new corporation, and for the first time, it consisted of the well-known four rings. In this first version, every ring contained the logo of the four merged companies.
Since then, there were several company adjustments. Today's Audi logo was first used when the company was renamed to "Audi AG" in 1985.
There is a lot of interesting information on the Audi-Website.
