Audi History

The Auto Union plants were heavily bombed and severely damaged during World War II. After the war Zwickau was located in the Soviet occupied zone of Germany (Since 1949 German Democratic Republic). The Auto Union AG was liquidated. After the expropriation of all Auto Union production plants, the Audi factory became "VEB Automobilwerk Zwickau" (AWZ). The new Auto Union was launched as a justicial new company on 3 September, 1949 in Ingolstadt (Bavaria). Many employees of the destroyed factories in Zwickau came to Ingolstadt and restarted the production of cars and motorcycles. The first car-like vehicle produced in Ingolstadt was a utility van, the DKW F89L also known as DKW-Schnelllaster. After a former Rheinmetall gun factory in Duesseldorf was established as a second assembly facility, the compact sedan car DKW F89 went into production. Both models were based on pre-war constructions: the DKW F8 and the DKW F9. The former Audi factory in Zwickau, now under Soviet control, manufactured since the pre-war DKW models as IFA F8 and IFA F9 in a very similar way, beginning in 1949. All these cars were equipped with the famous DKW two-stroke engines.