Audi
Audi have become one of the most successful and fastest growing car brands in recent years. The company has been around for many years but it has only really become a popular global brand in the last couple of decades. A big part of the reason for their growth is that they have a reputation for both performance and quality at a reasonable price. This has resulted in a much greater global appeal than they had in the past.
Audi is one of the oldest car companies in the world having been formed before the start of the twentieth century. Like most car companies they struggled to survive the first years of existence by producing cars in small numbers for wealthy buyers. And also like most other early car makers the key to their survival turned out to be the First World War during which they were able to move into production of military equipment. Not only did this give them enough money to stay afloat but it also meant that they ended the war with large production facilities that they could use to become a large scale manufacturer.
After the war Audi was one of many German car makers, far too many for the market to support. The result was that a number of them, including Audi were merged to form Auto Union. Under Auto Union the cars will still produced under the different brand names but they were basically the same design. During this period Auto Union focused on building small cheap cars with two stroke engines. This is proved to be a successful formula as this was the days of the depression. Auto Union continued with this formula until World War Two forced them back into war production.
After the war Auto Union picked up where they had left off and this worked for awhile but the great prosperity of the fifties meant there wasn't a huge demand for small cheap two stroke cars. Ultimately this resulted in Auto Union being bought by Volkswagen. After the purchase it was decided that the focus of the company needed to change and they decided to no longer produce the two stroke engines. Volkswagen also decided to shut down most of the brands that they had got from Auto Union and focus just on the Audi brand. The result is that Audi was reborn as the maker of a full range of vehicles.
Today Audi is an independent subsidiary of Volkswagen who focus mainly on building cars in all classes that tend to be sportier and more high performance than the other Volkswagen brands. The company has developed a good reputation and sales have been strong and growing for a number of years. A big reason for this is that Audi's have become very popular in Asia; they have also started to become much more popular in North America over the last decade.