Son of a Swiss multi-millionaire, his career started with Mercedes-Benz as a junior driver in 1936, then as an Auto Union junior driver in 1938, starting in three Grands Prix.
The medium off-road passenger car was built by the Opelwerk Brandenburg (chassis only), Wanderer in Siegmar-Schönau (today a part of Chemnitz), and Horch in Zwickau (both members of Auto Union).
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Several manufacturers were therefore charged with production, each supposedly following the same standardized plans: BMW (Werk Eisenach), Hanomag, Stoewer, Opel (Werk Brandenburg), Ford Germany and Auto Union (Horch and Wanderer).
Approximately 23,000 RSO of all versions were produced by Steyr (2,600 pcs), Klöckner-Humboldt-Deutz AG (KHD; 12,500 pcs), Auto Union - Siegmar plant (former Wanderer; 5,600 pcs) and Gräf & Stift (4,500 pcs).
In the mid-50s a Slovenian company called Agroservis partnered with Auto Union, building a factory to produce DKW models called Moto Montaža.
It featured the addition of "over 40" new cars (now 165+) including Auto Union, Bugatti, and De Tomaso vehicles.
VW consolidated the former Auto Union marques into a single company, re-using the Audi name to designate vehicles manufactured by the company rather than continuing to manufacture vehicles under the names of the various brands that had made up the original Auto Union.
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The DKW Typ 4=8 is a small rear-wheel drive two-stroke V4 engined car produced at the company’s Spandau plant by DKW (part of the Auto Union).
Enzo Ferrari had long admired the V12 engines of Packard, Auto Union, and Alfa Romeo (where he was long employed), but his first car, the 1940 Auto Avio Costruzioni 815, used a Fiat straight-8.
The Million Franc Race, or ‘Prix du Million’, was an effort in 1937 by the French Popular Front to induce French automobile manufacturers to develop race cars capable of competing with the incredibly advanced German Mercedes-Benz and Auto Union racers of the time, which were backed by the Nazi government in a (largely successful) attempt to dominate the sport, in order to 'prove the superiority of the Aryan race'.
Between 1940 and 1943 the chassis of standard medium passenger car, a all-wheel drive vehicle for military purpose, which had been originally developed by Horch (Auto Union) in Zwickau, was also assembled under licence at the Opel Brandenburg plant.
The company was effectively refounded in West Germany in 1949, following the loss to the Soviets of its Zwickau assets.Three of the four businesses that had constituted Auto Union before the war seemed unlikely ever to reappear on either side of the Iron Curtain, but starting in 1949 the DKW name was used for the F89 assembled by Auto Union in the west: this was the model replaced by the 3=6.
Except of former DKW factory at Berlin-Spandau, the Auto Union’s manufacturing plants had been located in Saxony at Zwickau, Chemnitz and Zschopau when war had put an end to passenger vehicle production in 1942.
After Auto Union was purchased in 1964 by the Volkswagenwerk AG, the old brand Audi was introduced again together with the new four stroke vehicle Audi F103.