Audi

Audi AG

Audi head office in Ingolstadt
Type	Aktiengesellschaft
Traded as	FWB: NSU
Industry	Automotive
Predecessor	Auto Union GmbH NSU Motorenwerke AG
Founded	Historic Zwickau, Germany (25 April 1910; 108 years ago) Modern-era Neckarsulm, Germany (1 January 1969; 49 years ago)
Founder	August Horch
Headquarters	Ingolstadt, Germany
Number of locations	11 production facilities in 9 countries
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Abraham Schot, Chairman of the Board of Management Marc Lichte, Head of Design Ulrich Hackenberg, Head of Technical Development
Products	Luxury vehicles
Production output	2,024,881 units
Revenue	€58.42 billion (2015)
Operating income	€4.836 billion (2015)
Net income	€4.297 billion (2015)
Total assets	€16.832 billion (2009)
Total equity	€3.451 billion (2009)
Owner	Volkswagen Group (99.55%)
Number of employees	84,435 (2015)
Divisions	Audi e-tron Audi India
Subsidiaries	Audi Brussels Audi Hungaria Motor Kft. Ducati Italdesign Giugiaro Lamborghini Audi Sport GmbH
Website	audi.com
Footnotes / references Audi History: Chronicle, 2011 Annual Financial Report

Audi AG (Ger­man: [ˈʔaʊ̯diː ʔaːˈgeː] (lis­ten)) is a Ger­man au­to­mo­bile man­u­fac­turer that de­signs, en­gi­neers, pro­duces, mar­kets and dis­trib­utes lux­ury ve­hi­cles. Audi is a mem­ber of the Volk­swa­gen Group and has its roots at In­gol­stadt, Bavaria, Ger­many. Audi-branded ve­hi­cles are pro­duced in nine pro­duc­tion fa­cil­i­ties world­wide.

The ori­gins of the com­pany are com­plex, going back to the early 20th cen­tury and the ini­tial en­ter­prises (Horch and the Au­di­w­erke) founded by en­gi­neer Au­gust Horch; and two other man­u­fac­tur­ers (DKW and Wan­derer), lead­ing to the foun­da­tion of Auto Union in 1932. The mod­ern era of Audi es­sen­tially began in the 1960s when Auto Union was ac­quired by Volk­swa­gen from Daim­ler-Benz. After re­launch­ing the Audi brand with the 1965 in­tro­duc­tion of the Audi F103 se­ries, Volk­swa­gen merged Auto Union with NSU Mo­toren­werke in 1969, thus cre­at­ing the pre­sent day form of the com­pany.

The com­pany name is based on the Latin trans­la­tion of the sur­name of the founder, Au­gust Horch. “Horch”, mean­ing “lis­ten” in Ger­man, be­comes “audi” in Latin. The four rings of the Audi logo each rep­re­sent one of four car com­pa­nies that banded to­gether to cre­ate Audi’s pre­de­ces­sor com­pany, Auto Union. Audi’s slo­gan is Vor­sprung durch Technik, mean­ing “Being Ahead through Tech­nol­ogy”. How­ever, Audi USA had used the slo­gan “Truth in En­gi­neer­ing” from 2007 to 2016, and have not used the slo­gan since 2016. Audi, along with BMW and Mer­cedes-Benz, is among the best-sell­ing lux­ury au­to­mo­bile brands in the world.

History

Birth of the company and its name

Au­to­mo­bile com­pany Wan­derer was orig­i­nally es­tab­lished in 1885, later be­com­ing a branch of Audi AG. An­other com­pany, NSU, which also later merged into Audi, was founded dur­ing this time, and later sup­plied the chas­sis for Got­tlieb Daim­ler‘s four-wheeler.

On 14 No­vem­ber 1899, Au­gust Horch (1868–1951) es­tab­lished the com­pany A. Horch & Cie. in the Ehren­feld dis­trict of Cologne. In 1902, he moved with his com­pany to Re­ichen­bach im Vogt­land. On 10 May 1904, he founded the Au­gust Horch & Cie. Mo­tor­wa­gen­werke AG, a joint-stock com­pany in Zwickau (State of Sax­ony).

After trou­bles with Horch chief fi­nan­cial of­fi­cer, Au­gust Horch left Mo­tor­wa­gen­werke and founded in Zwickau on 16 July 1909, his sec­ond com­pany, the Au­gust Horch Au­to­mo­bil­w­erke GmbH. His for­mer part­ners sued him for trade­mark in­fringe­ment. The Ger­man Re­ichs­gericht(Supreme Court) in Leipzig, even­tu­ally de­ter­mined that the Horch brand be­longed to his for­mer company.

1923 Audi Type E

Since Au­gust Horch was pro­hib­ited from using “Horch” as a trade name in his new car busi­ness, he called a meet­ing with close busi­ness friends, Paul and Franz Fikentscher from Zwickau. At the apart­ment of Franz Fikentscher, they dis­cussed how to come up with a new name for the com­pany. Dur­ing this meet­ing, Franz’s son was qui­etly study­ing Latin in a cor­ner of the room. Sev­eral times he looked like he was on the verge of say­ing some­thing but would just swal­low his words and con­tinue work­ing, until he fi­nally blurted out, “Fa­ther – au­diatur et al­tera pars… wouldn’t it be a good idea to call it audi in­stead of horch?” “Horch!” in Ger­man means “Hark!” or “hear”, which is “Audi” in the sin­gu­lar im­per­a­tive form of “au­dire” – “to lis­ten” – in Latin. The idea was en­thu­si­as­ti­cally ac­cepted by every­one at­tend­ing the meeting. On 25 April 1910 the Audi Au­to­mo­bil­w­erke GmbH Zwickau (from 1915 on Au­di­w­erke AG Zwickau) was en­tered in the com­pany’s reg­is­ter of Zwickau reg­is­tra­tion court.

The first Audi au­to­mo­bile, the Audi Type A 10/22 hp (16 kW) Sport-Phaeton, was pro­duced in the same year, fol­lowed by the suc­ces­sor Type B 10/28PS in the same year.

Audi started with a 2,612 cc in­line-four en­gine model Type A, fol­lowed by a 3,564 cc model, as well as 4,680 cc and 5,720 cc mod­els. These cars were suc­cess­ful even in sport­ing events. The first six-cylin­der model Type M, 4,655 cc ap­peared in 1924.

Au­gust Horch left the Au­di­w­erke in 1920 for a high po­si­tion at the min­istry of trans­port, but he was still in­volved with Audi as a mem­ber of the board of trustees. In Sep­tem­ber 1921, Audi be­came the first Ger­man car man­u­fac­turer to pre­sent a pro­duc­tion car, the Audi Type K, with left-handed drive. Left-hand drive spread and es­tab­lished dom­i­nance dur­ing the 1920s be­cause it pro­vided a bet­ter view of on­com­ing traf­fic, mak­ing over­tak­ing safer.

The merger of the four companies under the logo of four rings

Main article: Auto Union

In Au­gust 1928, Jørgen Ras­mussen, the owner of Dampf-Kraft-Wa­gen (DKW), ac­quired the ma­jor­ity of shares in Au­di­w­erke AG. In the same year, Ras­mussen bought the re­mains of the U.S. au­to­mo­bile man­u­fac­turer Rick­en­backer, in­clud­ing the man­u­fac­tur­ing equip­ment for eight-cylin­der en­gines. These en­gines were used in Audi Zwickau and Audi Dresden mod­els that were launched in 1929. At the same time, six-cylin­der and four-cylin­der (the ”four” with a Peu­geot en­gine) mod­els were man­u­fac­tured. Audi cars of that era were lux­u­ri­ous cars equipped with spe­cial body­work.

In 1932, Audi merged with Horch, DKW, and Wan­derer, to form Auto Union AG, Chem­nitz. It was dur­ing this pe­riod that the com­pany of­fered the Audi Front that be­came the first Eu­ro­pean car to com­bine a six-cylin­der en­gine with front-wheel drive. It used a pow­er­train shared with the Wan­derer, but turned 180-de­grees, so that the drive shaft faced the front.

Be­fore World War II, Auto Union used the four in­ter­linked rings that make up the Audi badge today, rep­re­sent­ing these four brands. How­ever, this badge was used only on Auto Union rac­ing cars in that pe­riod while the mem­ber com­pa­nies used their own names and em­blems. The tech­no­log­i­cal de­vel­op­ment be­came more and more con­cen­trated and some Audi mod­els were pro­pelled by Horch or Wan­derer built en­gines.

Re­flect­ing the eco­nomic pres­sures of the time, Auto Union con­cen­trated in­creas­ingly on smaller cars through the 1930s, so that by 1938 the com­pany’s DKW brand ac­counted for 17.9% of the Ger­man car mar­ket, while Audi held only 0.1%. After the final few Audis were de­liv­ered in 1939 the “Audi” name dis­ap­peared com­pletely from the new car mar­ket for more than two decades.

Post-World War II

IFA F9

Like most Ger­man man­u­fac­tur­ing, at the onset of World War II the Auto Union plants were re­tooled for mil­i­tary pro­duc­tion, and were a tar­get for al­lied bomb­ing dur­ing the war which left them dam­aged.

Over­run by the So­viet Army in 1945, on the or­ders of the So­viet Union mil­i­tary ad­min­is­tra­tion the fac­to­ries were dis­man­tled as part of war repa­ra­tions. Fol­low­ing this, the com­pany’s en­tire as­sets were ex­pro­pri­ated with­out compensation. On 17 Au­gust 1948, Auto Union AG of Chem­nitz was deleted from the com­mer­cial register. These ac­tions had the ef­fect of liq­ui­dat­ing Ger­many’s Auto Union AG. The re­mains of the Audi plant of Zwickau be­came the VEB (for “Peo­ple Owned En­ter­prise”) Au­to­mo­bil­w­erk Zwickau or AWZ (in Eng­lish: Au­to­mo­bile Works Zwickau).

With no prospect of con­tin­u­ing pro­duc­tion in So­viet-con­trolled East Ger­many, Auto Union ex­ec­u­tives began the process of re­lo­cat­ing what was left of the com­pany to West Ger­many. A site was cho­sen in In­gol­stadt, Bavaria, to start a spare parts op­er­a­tion in late 1945, which would even­tu­ally serve as the head­quar­ters of the re­formed Auto Union in 1949.

The for­mer Audi fac­tory in Zwickau restarted as­sem­bly of the pre-war-mod­els in 1949. These DKW mod­els were re­named to IFA F8 and IFA F9 and were sim­i­lar to the West Ger­man ver­sions. West and East Ger­man mod­els were equipped with the tra­di­tional and renowned DKW two-stroke en­gines. The Zwickau plant man­u­fac­tured the in­fa­mous Tra­bant until 1991, when it came under Volk­swa­gen con­trol—ef­fec­tively bring­ing it under the same um­brella as Audi since 1945.

New Auto Union unit

A new West Ger­man head­quar­tered Auto Union was launched in In­gol­stadt with loans from the Bavar­ian state gov­ern­ment and Mar­shall Plan aid. The re­formed com­pany was launched 3 Sep­tem­ber 1949 and con­tin­ued DKW’s tra­di­tion of pro­duc­ing front-wheel drive ve­hi­cles with two-stroke engines. This in­cluded pro­duc­tion of a small but sturdy 125 cc mo­tor­cy­cle and a DKW de­liv­ery van, the DKW F89 Lat In­gol­stadt. The In­gol­stadt site was large, con­sist­ing of an ex­ten­sive com­plex of for­merly mil­i­tary build­ings which was suit­able for ad­min­is­tra­tion as well as ve­hi­cle ware­hous­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion, but at this stage there was at In­gol­stadt no ded­i­cated plant suit­able for mass pro­duc­tion of au­to­mo­biles: for man­u­fac­tur­ing the com­pany’s first post-war mass-mar­ket pas­sen­ger car plant ca­pac­ity in Düssel­dorf was rented from Rhein­metall-Bor­sig. It was only ten years later, after the com­pany had at­tracted an in­vestor, when funds be­came avail­able for con­struc­tion of major car plant at the In­gol­stadt head of­fice site.

In 1958, in re­sponse to pres­sure from Friedrich Flick, then the com­pany’s largest sin­gle shareholder, Daim­ler-Benz took an 87% hold­ing in the Auto Union com­pany, and this was in­creased to a 100% hold­ing in 1959. How­ever, small two-stroke cars were not the focus of Daim­ler-Benz’s in­ter­ests, and while the early 1960s saw major in­vest­ment in new Mer­cedes mod­els and in a state of the art fac­tory for Auto Union’s, the com­pany’s aging model range at this time did not ben­e­fit from the eco­nomic boom of the early 1960s to the same ex­tent as com­peti­tor man­u­fac­tur­ers such as Volk­swa­gen and Opel. The de­ci­sion to dis­pose of the Auto Union busi­ness was based on its lack of profitability. Iron­i­cally, by the time they sold the busi­ness, it also in­cluded a large new fac­tory and near pro­duc­tion-ready mod­ern four-stroke en­gine, which would en­able the Auto Union busi­ness, under a new owner, to em­bark on a pe­riod of prof­itable growth, now pro­duc­ing not Auto Unions or DKWs, but using the “Audi” name, res­ur­rected in 1965 after a 25-year gap.

In 1964, Volk­swa­gen ac­quired a 50% hold­ing in the busi­ness, which in­cluded the new fac­tory in In­gol­stadt, the DKW and Audi brands along with the rights to the new en­gine de­sign which had been funded by Daim­ler-Benz, who in re­turn re­tained the dor­mant Horch trade­mark and the Düssel­dorf fac­tory which be­came a Mer­cedes-Benz van as­sem­bly plant. Eigh­teen months later, Volk­swa­gen bought com­plete con­trol of In­gol­stadt, and by 1966 were using the spare ca­pac­ity of the In­gol­stadt plant to as­sem­ble an ad­di­tional 60,000 Volk­swa­gen Bee­tles per year. Two-stroke en­gines be­came less pop­u­lar dur­ing the 1960s as cus­tomers were more at­tracted to the smoother four-stroke en­gines. In Sep­tem­ber 1965, the DKW F102 was fit­ted with a four-stroke en­gine and a facelift for the car’s front and rear. Volk­swa­gen dumped the DKW brand be­cause of its as­so­ci­a­tions with two-stroke tech­nol­ogy, and hav­ing clas­si­fied the model in­ter­nally as the F103, sold it sim­ply as the “Audi”. Later de­vel­op­ments of the model were named after their horse­power rat­ings and sold as the Audi 60, 75, 80, and Super 90, sell­ing until 1972. Ini­tially, Volk­swa­gen was hos­tile to the idea of Auto Union as a stand­alone en­tity pro­duc­ing its own mod­els hav­ing ac­quired the com­pany merely to boost its own pro­duc­tion ca­pac­ity through the In­gol­stadt as­sem­bly plant – to the point where Volk­swa­gen ex­ec­u­tives or­dered that the Auto Union name and flags bear­ing the four rings were re­moved from the fac­tory build­ings. Then VW chief Heinz Nord­hoff ex­plic­itly for­bade Auto Union from any fur­ther prod­uct de­vel­op­ment. Fear­ing that the Volk­swa­gen had no long term am­bi­tion for the Audi brand, Auto Union en­gi­neers under the lead­er­ship of Lud­wig Kraus de­vel­oped the first Audi 100 in se­cret, with­out Nord­hoff’s knowl­edge. When pre­sented with a fin­ished pro­to­type, Nord­hoff was so im­pressed he au­tho­rised the car for pro­duc­tion, which when launched in 1968, went on to be a huge suc­cess. With this, the res­ur­rec­tion of the Audi brand was now com­plete, this being fol­lowed by the first gen­er­a­tion Audi 80 in 1972, which would in turn pro­vide a tem­plate for VW’s new front-wheel-drive wa­ter-cooled range which de­buted from the mid-1970s on­ward.

Audi 80 assembly line in Wolfsburg, 1973

In 1969, Auto Union merged with NSU, based in Neckar­sulm, near Stuttgart. In the 1950s, NSU had been the world’s largest man­u­fac­turer of mo­tor­cy­cles, but had moved on to pro­duce small cars like the NSU Prinz, the TT and TTS ver­sions of which are still pop­u­lar as vin­tage race cars. NSU then fo­cused on new ro­tary en­gines based on the ideas of Felix Wankel. In 1967, the new NSU Ro 80 was a car well ahead of its time in tech­ni­cal de­tails such as aero­dy­nam­ics, light weight, and safety. How­ever, teething prob­lems with the ro­tary en­gines put an end to the in­de­pen­dence of NSU. The Neckar­sulm plant is now used to pro­duce the larger Audi mod­els A6 and A8. The Neckar­sulm fac­tory is also home of the “quat­tro GmbH” (from No­vem­ber 2016 “Audi Sport GmbH“), a sub­sidiary re­spon­si­ble for de­vel­op­ment and pro­duc­tion of Audi high-per­for­mance mod­els: the R8 and the “RS” model range.

Modern era

The new merged com­pany was in­cor­po­rated on 1 Jan­u­ary 1969 and was known as Audi NSU Auto Union AG, with its head­quar­ters at NSU’s Neckar­sulm plant, and saw the emer­gence of Audi as a sep­a­rate brand for the first time since the pre-war era. Volk­swa­gen in­tro­duced the Audi brand to the United States for the 1970 model year. That same year, the mid-sized car that NSU had been work­ing on, the K70, orig­i­nally in­tended to slot be­tween the rear-en­gined Prinz mod­els and the fu­tur­is­tic NSU Ro 80, was in­stead launched as a Volk­swa­gen.

After the launch of the Audi 100 of 1968, the Audi 80/Fox (which formed the basis for the 1973 Volk­swa­gen Pas­sat) fol­lowed in 1972 and the Audi 50 (later re­badged as the Volk­swa­gen Polo) in 1974. The Audi 50 was a sem­i­nal de­sign be­cause it was the first in­car­na­tion of the Golf/Polo con­cept, one that led to a hugely suc­cess­ful world car. Ul­ti­mately, the Audi 80 and 100 (prog­en­i­tors of the A4 and A6, re­spec­tively) be­came the com­pany’s biggest sell­ers, whilst lit­tle in­vest­ment was made in the fad­ing NSU range; the Prinz mod­els were dropped in 1973 whilst the fa­tally flawed NSU Ro80 went out of pro­duc­tion in 1977, spelling the ef­fec­tive end of the NSU brand. Pro­duc­tion of the Audi 100 had been steadily moved from In­gol­stadt to Neckar­sulm as the 1970s had pro­gressed, any by the ap­pear­ance of the sec­ond gen­er­a­tion C2 ver­sion in 1976, all pro­duc­tion was now at the for­mer NSU plant. Neckar­sulm from that point on­ward would pro­duce Audi’s higher end mod­els.

The Audi image at this time was a con­ser­v­a­tive one, and so, a pro­posal from chas­sis en­gi­neer Jörg Bensinger was ac­cepted to de­velop the four-wheel drive tech­nol­ogy in Volk­swa­gen‘s Iltis mil­i­tary ve­hi­cle for an Audi per­for­mance car and rally rac­ing car. The per­for­mance car, in­tro­duced in 1980, was named the “Audi Quat­tro“, a tur­bocharged coupé which was also the first Ger­man large-scale pro­duc­tion ve­hi­cle to fea­ture per­ma­nent all-wheel drive through a cen­tre dif­fer­en­tial. Com­monly re­ferred to as the “Ur-Quat­tro” (the “Ur-” pre­fix is a Ger­man aug­men­ta­tive used, in this case, to mean “orig­i­nal” and is also ap­plied to the first gen­er­a­tion of Audi’s S4 and S6 Sport Sa­loons, as in “UrS4” and “UrS6”), few of these ve­hi­cles were pro­duced (all hand-built by a sin­gle team), but the model was a great suc­cess in ral­ly­ing. Promi­nent wins proved the vi­a­bil­ity of all-wheel drive race­cars, and the Audi name be­came as­so­ci­ated with ad­vances in au­to­mo­tive tech­nol­ogy.

In 1985, with the Auto Union and NSU brands ef­fec­tively dead, the com­pany’s of­fi­cial name was now short­ened to sim­ply Audi AG. At the same time the com­pany’s head­quar­ters moved back to In­gol­stadt and two new wholly owned sub­sidiaries; Auto Union GmbH and NSU GmbH, were formed to own and man­age the his­tor­i­cal trade­marks and in­tel­lec­tual prop­erty of the orig­i­nal con­stituent com­pa­nies (the ex­cep­tion being Horch, which had been re­tained by Daim­ler-Benz after the VW takeover), and to op­er­ate Audi’s her­itage op­er­a­tions.

Audi Quattro

In 1986, as the Pas­sat-based Audi 80 was be­gin­ning to de­velop a kind of “grand­fa­ther’s car” image, the type 89 was in­tro­duced. This com­pletely new de­vel­op­ment sold ex­tremely well. How­ever, its mod­ern and dy­namic ex­te­rior be­lied the low per­for­mance of its base en­gine, and its base pack­age was quite spar­tan (even the pas­sen­ger-side mir­ror was an op­tion.) In 1987, Audi put for­ward a new and very el­e­gant Audi 90, which had a much su­pe­rior set of stan­dard fea­tures. In the early 1990s, sales began to slump for the Audi 80 se­ries, and some basic con­struc­tion prob­lems started to sur­face.

In the early part of the 21st cen­tury, Audi set forth on a Ger­man race­track to claim and main­tain sev­eral world records, such as top speed en­durance. This ef­fort was in-line with the com­pany’s her­itage from the 1930s rac­ing era Sil­ver Ar­rows.

Through the early 1990s, Audi began to shift its tar­get mar­ket up­scale to com­pete against Ger­man au­tomak­ers Mer­cedes-Benz and BMW. This began with the re­lease of the Audi V8 in 1990. It was es­sen­tially a new en­gine fit­ted to the Audi 100/200, but with no­tice­able body­work dif­fer­ences. Most ob­vi­ous was the new grille that was now in­cor­po­rated in the bon­net.

By 1991, Audi had the four-cylin­der Audi 80, the 5-cylin­der Audi 90 and Audi 100, the tur­bocharged Audi 200 and the Audi V8. There was also a coupe ver­sion of the 80/90 with both 4- and 5-cylin­der en­gines.

Al­though the five-cylin­der en­gine was a suc­cess­ful and ro­bust pow­er­plant, it was still a lit­tle too dif­fer­ent for the tar­get mar­ket. With the in­tro­duc­tion of an all-new Audi 100 in 1992, Audi in­tro­duced a 2.8L V6 en­gine. This en­gine was also fit­ted to a face-lifted Audi 80 (all 80 and 90 mod­els were now badged 80 ex­cept for the USA), giv­ing this model a choice of four-, five-, and six-cylin­der en­gines, in Sa­loon, Coupé and Cabri­o­let body styles.

The five-cylin­der was soon dropped as a major en­gine choice; how­ever, a tur­bocharged 230 hp (170 kW) ver­sion re­mained. The en­gine, ini­tially fit­ted to the 200 quat­tro 20V of 1991, was a de­riv­a­tive of the en­gine fit­ted to the Sport Quat­tro. It was fit­ted to the Audi Coupé, and named the S2 and also to the Audi 100 body, and named the S4. These two mod­els were the be­gin­ning of the mass-pro­duced S se­riesof per­for­mance cars.

Audi 5000 unintended acceleration allegations

Sales in the United States fell after a se­ries of re­calls from 1982 to 1987 of Audi 5000 mod­els as­so­ci­ated with re­ported in­ci­dents of sud­den un­in­tended ac­cel­er­a­tion linked to six deaths and 700 accidents. At the time, NHTSA was in­ves­ti­gat­ing 50 car mod­els from 20 man­u­fac­tur­ers for sud­den surges of power.

A 60 Min­utes re­port aired 23 No­vem­ber 1986, fea­tur­ing in­ter­views with six peo­ple who had sued Audi after re­port­ing un­in­tended ac­cel­er­a­tion, show­ing an Audi 5000 os­ten­si­bly suf­fer­ing a prob­lem when the brake pedal was pushed. Sub­se­quent in­ves­ti­ga­tion re­vealed that 60 Minutes had en­gi­neered the fail­ure – fit­ting a can­is­ter of com­pressed air on the pas­sen­ger-side floor, linked via a hose to a hole drilled into the transmission.

Audi 100 C3, sold as the Audi 5000 in the U.S.

Audi con­tended, prior to find­ings by out­side investigators, that the prob­lems were caused by dri­ver error, specif­i­cally pedal misapplication. Sub­se­quently, the Na­tional High­way Traf­fic Safety Ad­min­is­tra­tion (NHTSA) con­cluded that the ma­jor­ity of un­in­tended ac­cel­er­a­tion cases, in­clud­ing all the ones that prompted the 60 Minutes re­port, were caused by dri­ver error such as con­fu­sion of pedals. CBS did not ac­knowl­edge the test re­sults of in­volved gov­ern­ment agen­cies, but did ac­knowl­edge the sim­i­lar re­sults of an­other study.

In a re­view study pub­lished in 2012, NHTSA sum­ma­rized its past find­ings about the Audi un­in­tended ac­cel­er­a­tion prob­lems: “Once an un­in­tended ac­cel­er­a­tion had begun, in the Audi 5000, due to a fail­ure in the idle-sta­bi­lizer sys­tem (pro­duc­ing an ini­tial ac­cel­er­a­tion of 0.3g), pedal mis­ap­pli­ca­tion re­sult­ing from panic, con­fu­sion, or un­fa­mil­iar­ity with the Audi 5000 con­tributed to the sever­ity of the incident.”

This sum­mary is con­sis­tent with the con­clu­sions of NHTSA’s most tech­ni­cal analy­sis at the time: “Audi idle-sta­bi­liza­tion sys­tems were prone to de­fects which re­sulted in ex­ces­sive idle speeds and brief unan­tic­i­pated ac­cel­er­a­tions of up to 0.3g [which is sim­i­lar in mag­ni­tude to an emer­gency stop in a sub­way car]. These ac­cel­er­a­tions could not be the sole cause of [(long-du­ra­tion) sud­den ac­cel­er­a­tion in­ci­dents (SAI)], but might have trig­gered some SAIs by star­tling the driver. The de­fec­tive idle-sta­bi­liza­tion sys­tem per­formed a type of elec­tronic throt­tle con­trol. Sig­nif­i­cantly: mul­ti­ple “in­ter­mit­tent mal­func­tions of the elec­tronic con­trol unit were ob­served and recorded … and [were also ob­served and] re­ported by Trans­port Canada.”

With a se­ries of re­call cam­paigns, Audi made sev­eral mod­i­fi­ca­tions; the first ad­justed the dis­tance be­tween the brake and ac­cel­er­a­tor pedal on au­to­matic-trans­mis­sion models. Later re­pairs, of 250,000 cars dat­ing back to 1978, added a de­vice re­quir­ing the dri­ver to press the brake pedal be­fore shift­ing out of park. A legacy of the Audi 5000 and other re­ported cases of sud­den un­in­tended ac­cel­er­a­tion are in­tri­cate gear stick pat­terns and brake in­ter­lock mech­a­nisms to pre­vent in­ad­ver­tent shift­ing into for­ward or re­verse. It is un­clear how the de­fects in the idle-sta­bi­liza­tion sys­tem were ad­dressed.

Audi’s U.S. sales, which had reached 74,061 in 1985, dropped to 12,283 in 1991 and re­mained level for three years. – with re­sale val­ues falling dramatically. Audi sub­se­quently of­fered in­creased war­ranty protection and re­named the af­fected mod­els – with the 5000 be­com­ing the 100 and 200 in 1989 – and reached the same sales lev­els again only by model year 2000.

A 2010 Busi­ness­Week ar­ti­cle – out­lin­ing pos­si­ble par­al­lels be­tween Audi’s ex­pe­ri­ence and 2009–2010 Toy­ota ve­hi­cle re­calls – noted a class-ac­tion law­suit filed in 1987 by about 7,500 Audi 5000-model own­ers re­mains un­set­tled and is re­mains con­tested in Chicago‘s Cook Countyafter ap­peals at the Illi­nois state and U.S. fed­eral levels.

Model introductions

In the mid-to-late 1990s, Audi in­tro­duced new tech­nolo­gies in­clud­ing the use of alu­minum con­struc­tion. Pro­duced from 1999 to 2005, the Audi A2 was a fu­tur­is­tic super mini, born from the Al2 con­cept, with many fea­tures that helped re­gain con­sumer con­fi­dence, like the alu­minium space frame, which was a first in pro­duc­tion car de­sign. In the A2 Audi fur­ther ex­panded their TDI tech­nol­ogy through the use of fru­gal three-cylin­der en­gines. The A2 was ex­tremely aero­dy­namic and was de­signed around a wind tun­nel. The Audi A2 was crit­i­cised for its high price and was never re­ally a sales suc­cess but it planted Audi as a cut­ting-edge man­u­fac­turer. The model, a Mer­cedes-Benz A-Class com­peti­tor, sold rel­a­tively well in Eu­rope. How­ever, the A2 was dis­con­tin­ued in 2005 and Audi de­cided not to de­velop an im­me­di­ate re­place­ment.

The next major model change came in 1995 when the Audi A4 re­placed the Audi 80. The new nomen­cla­ture scheme was ap­plied to the Audi 100 to be­come the Audi A6 (with a minor facelift). This also meant the S4 be­came the S6 and a new S4 was in­tro­duced in the A4 body. The S2 was dis­con­tin­ued. The Audi Cabri­o­let con­tin­ued on (based on the Audi 80 plat­form) until 1999, gain­ing the en­gine up­grades along the way. A new A3 hatch­back model (shar­ing the Volk­swa­gen Golf Mk4‘s plat­form) was in­tro­duced to the range in 1996, and the rad­i­cal Audi TT coupé and road­ster were de­buted in 1998 based on the same un­der­pin­nings.

The en­gines avail­able through­out the range were now a 1.4 L, 1.6 L and 1.8 L four-cylin­der, 1.8 L four-cylin­der turbo, 2.6 L and 2.8 L V6, 2.2 L turbo-charged five-cylin­der and the 4.2 L V8 en­gine. The V6s were re­placed by new 2.4 L and 2.8 L 30V V6s in 1998, with marked im­prove­ment in power, torque and smooth­ness. Fur­ther en­gines were added along the way, in­clud­ing a 3.7 L V8 and 6.0 L W12 en­gine for the A8.

Audi AG today

Audi’s sales grew strongly in the 2000s, with de­liv­er­ies to cus­tomers in­creas­ing from 653,000 in 2000 to 1,003,000 in 2008. The largest sales in­creases came from East­ern Eu­rope (+19.3%), Africa (+17.2%) and the Mid­dle East (+58.5%). China in par­tic­u­lar has be­come a key mar­ket, rep­re­sent­ing 108,000 out of 705,000 cars de­liv­ered in the first three quar­ters of 2009. One fac­tor for its pop­u­lar­ity in China is that Audis have be­come the car of choice for pur­chase by the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment for of­fi­cials, and pur­chases by the gov­ern­ment are re­spon­si­ble for 20% of its sales in China. As of late 2009, Audi’s op­er­at­ing profit of €1.17-bil­lion ($1.85-bil­lion) made it the biggest con­trib­u­tor to par­ent Volk­swa­gen Group’s nine-month op­er­at­ing profit of €1.5-bil­lion, while the other mar­ques in Group such as Bent­ley and SEAT had suf­fered con­sid­er­able losses. May 2011 saw record sales for Audi of Amer­ica with the new Audi A7 and Audi A3 TDI Clean Diesel. In May 2012, Audi re­ported a 10% in­crease in its sales—from 408 units to 480 in the last year alone.

Audi man­u­fac­tures ve­hi­cles in seven plants around the world, some of which are shared with other VW Group marques al­though many sub-as­sem­blies such as en­gines and trans­mis­sions are man­u­fac­tured within other Volk­swa­gen Group plants.

Audi’s two prin­ci­pal as­sem­bly plants are:

• Ingolstadt, Opened by Auto Union in 1964, (A3, A4, A5, Q5)
• Neckarsulm, Acquired from NSU in 1969 (A4, A6, A7, A8, R8 & all RS variants)

Out­side of Ger­many, Audi pro­duces ve­hi­cles at:

• Aurangabad, India since 2006
• Bratislava, Slovakia, shared with Volkswagen, SEAT, Škoda and Porsche (Q7)
• Brussels, Belgium, acquired from Volkswagen in 2007 (A1)
• Changchun, China since 1995
• Győr, Hungary, (TT and some A3 variants)
• Jakarta, Indonesia since 2011
• Martorell, Spain shared with SEAT and Volkswagen (Q3)
• San José Chiapa, Mexico (Q5)

In Sep­tem­ber 2012, Audi an­nounced the con­struc­tion of its first North Amer­i­can man­u­fac­tur­ing plant in Puebla, Mex­ico. This plant is ex­pected to be op­er­a­tive in 2016 and pro­duce the sec­ond gen­er­a­tion Q5.

From 2002 up to 2003, Audi headed the Audi Brand Group, a sub­di­vi­sion of the Volk­swa­gen Group’s Au­to­mo­tive Di­vi­sion con­sist­ing of Audi, Lam­borgh­ini and SEAT, that was fo­cused on sporty val­ues, with the mar­ques’ prod­uct ve­hi­cles and per­for­mance being under the higher re­spon­si­bil­ity of the Audi brand.

On Jan­u­ary 2014, Audi, along with the Wire­less Power Con­sor­tium, op­er­ated a booth which demon­strated a phone com­part­ment using the Qi open in­ter­face stan­dard at the Con­sumer Elec­tron­ics Show (CES). In May, most of the Audi deal­ers in UK falsely claimed that the Audi A7, A8, and R8 were Euro NCAP safety tested, all achiev­ing five out of five stars. In fact none were tested.

In 2015, Audi ad­mit­ted that at least 2.1 mil­lion Audi cars had been in­volved in the Volk­swa­gen emis­sions test­ing scan­dal in which soft­ware in­stalled in the cars ma­nip­u­lated emis­sions data to fool reg­u­la­tors and allow the cars to pol­lute at higher than gov­ern­ment-man­dated lev­els. The A1, A3, A4, A5, A6, TT, Q3 and Q5 mod­els were im­pli­cated in the scandal. Audi promised to quickly find a tech­ni­cal so­lu­tion and up­grade the cars so they can func­tion within emis­sions regulations. Ul­rich Hack­en­berg, the head of re­search and de­vel­op­ment at Audi, was sus­pended in re­la­tion to the scandal. De­spite wide­spread media cov­er­age about the scan­dal through the month of Sep­tem­ber, Audi re­ported that U.S. sales for the month had in­creased by 16.2%. Audi’s par­ent com­pany Volk­swa­gen an­nounced on 18 June 2018 that Audi chief ex­ec­u­tive Ru­pert Stadler had been arrested.

In No­vem­ber 2015, the U.S. En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency im­pli­cated the 3-liter diesel en­gine ver­sions of the 2016 Audi A6 Quat­tro, A7 Quat­tro, A8, A8L and the Q5 as fur­ther mod­els that had emis­sions reg­u­la­tion de­feat-de­vice soft­ware installed. Thus, these mod­els emit­ted ni­tro­gen oxide at up to nine times the legal limit when the car de­tected that it was not hooked up to emis­sions test­ing equipment.

In No­vem­ber 2016, Audi ex­pressed an in­ten­tion to es­tab­lish an as­sem­bly fac­tory in Pak­istan, with the com­pany’s local part­ner ac­quir­ing land for a plant in Ko­rangi Creek In­dus­trial Park in Karachi. Ap­proval of the plan would lead to an in­vest­ment of $30 mil­lion in the new plant.

Technology

Audi AI

Audi AI is a dri­ver as­sist fea­ture of­fered by Audi. The com­pany’s stated in­tent is to offer fully au­tonomous dri­ving at a fu­ture time, ac­knowl­edg­ing that legal, reg­u­la­tory and tech­ni­cal hur­dles must be over­come to achieve this goal. On June 4, 2017, Audi stated that its new A8 will be fully self-dri­ving for speeds up to 60 km/h using its Audi AI. Con­trary to other cars, the dri­ver will not have to do safety checks such as touch­ing the steer­ing wheel every 15 sec­onds to use this fea­ture. The Audi A8 will there­fore be the first pro­duc­tion car to reach level 3 au­tonomous dri­ving, mean­ing that the dri­ver can safely turn their at­ten­tion away from dri­ving tasks, e.g. the dri­ver can text or watch a movie. Audi will also be the first man­u­fac­turer to use a 3D LIDAR sys­tem in ad­di­tion to cam­eras and ul­tra­sonic sen­sors for their AI.

Bodyshells

Audi pro­duces 100% gal­vanised cars to pre­vent cor­ro­sion, and was the first mass-mar­ket ve­hi­cle to do so, fol­low­ing in­tro­duc­tion of the process by Porsche, c. 1975. Along with other pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sures, the full-body zinc coat­ing has proved to be very ef­fec­tive in pre­vent­ing rust. The body’s re­sult­ing dura­bil­ity even sur­passed Audi’s own ex­pec­ta­tions, caus­ing the man­u­fac­turer to ex­tend its orig­i­nal 10-year war­ranty against cor­ro­sion per­fo­ra­tion to cur­rently 12 years (ex­cept for alu­minium bod­ies which do not rust).

Space frame

The Audi R8 uses Audi Space Frame technology

Audi in­tro­duced a new se­ries of ve­hi­cles in the mid-1990s and con­tin­ues to pur­sue new tech­nol­ogy and high per­for­mance. An all-alu­minium car was brought for­ward by Audi, and in 1994 the Audi A8was launched, which in­tro­duced alu­minium space frame tech­nol­ogy (called Audi Space Frame or ASF) which saves weight and im­proves tor­sion rigid­ity com­pared to a con­ven­tional steel frame. Prior to that ef­fort, Audi used ex­am­ples of the Type 44 chas­sis fab­ri­cated out of alu­minium as test-beds for the tech­nique. The dis­ad­van­tage of the alu­minium frame is that it is very ex­pen­sive to re­pair and re­quires a spe­cial­ized alu­minium bodyshop. The weight re­duc­tion is some­what off­set by the quat­tro four-wheel drive sys­tem which is stan­dard in most mar­kets. Nonethe­less, the A8 is usu­ally the light­est all-wheel drive car in the full-size lux­ury seg­ment, also hav­ing best-in-class fuel economy. The Audi A2, Audi TT and Audi R8 also use Audi Space Frame de­signs.

Drivetrains

Layout

For most of its lineup (ex­clud­ing the A3, A1, and TT mod­els), Audi has not adopted the trans­verse en­gine lay­out which is typ­i­cally found in econ­omy cars (such as Peu­geot and Citroën), since that would limit the type and power of en­gines that can be in­stalled. To be able to mount pow­er­ful en­gines (such as a V8 en­gine in the Audi S4 and Audi RS4, as well as the W12 en­gine in the Audi A8L W12), Audi has usu­ally en­gi­neered its more ex­pen­sive cars with a lon­gi­tu­di­nally front-mounted en­gine, in an “over­hung” po­si­tion, over the front wheels in front of the axle line – this lay­out dates back to the DKW and Auto Union sa­loons from the 1950s. But while this al­lows for the easy adop­tion of all-wheel drive, it goes against the ideal 50:50 weight dis­tri­b­u­tion.

In all its post Volk­swa­gen-era mod­els, Audi has firmly re­fused to adopt the tra­di­tional rear-wheel drive lay­out fa­vored by its two archri­vals Mer­cedes-Benz and BMW, fa­vor­ing ei­ther front-wheel drive or all-wheel drive. The ma­jor­ity of Audi’s lineup in the United States fea­tures all-wheel drive stan­dard on most of its ex­pen­sive ve­hi­cles (only the en­try-level trims of the A4 and A6 are avail­able with front-wheel drive), in con­trast to Mer­cedes-Benz and BMW whose lineup treats all-wheel drive as an op­tion. BMW did not offer all-wheel drive on its V8-pow­ered cars (as op­posed to crossover SUVs) until the 2010 BMW 7 Se­ries and 2011 BMW 5 Se­ries, while the Audi A8 has had all-wheel drive avail­able/stan­dard since the 1990s. Re­gard­ing high-per­for­mance vari­ants, Audi S and RS mod­els have al­ways had all-wheel drive, un­like their di­rect ri­vals from BMW M and Mer­cedes-AMG whose cars are rear-wheel drive only (al­though their per­for­mance crossover SUVs are all-wheel drive).

Audi has re­cently ap­plied the quat­tro badge to mod­els such as the A3 and TT which do not use the Torsen-based sys­tem as in prior years with a me­chan­i­cal cen­ter dif­fer­en­tial, but with the Haldex Trac­tion elec­tro-me­chan­i­cal clutch AWD sys­tem.

Engines

Volkswagen Group W12 engine from the Volkswagen Phaeton W12

Further information: List of Audi vehicles § Production model engines

Prior to the in­tro­duc­tion of the Audi 80 and Audi 50 in 1972 and 1974, re­spec­tively, Audi had led the de­vel­op­ment of the EA111 and EA827 in­line-four en­gine fam­i­lies. These new power units un­der­pinned the wa­ter-cooled re­vival of par­ent com­pany Volk­swa­gen (in the Polo, Golf, Pas­sat and Scirocco), whilst the many de­riv­a­tives and de­scen­dants of these two basic en­gine de­signs have ap­peared in every gen­er­a­tion of VW Group ve­hi­cles right up to the pre­sent day.

In the 1980s, Audi, along with Volvo, was the cham­pion of the in­line-five cylin­der, 2.1/2.2 L en­gine as a longer-last­ing al­ter­na­tive to more tra­di­tional six-cylin­der en­gines. This en­gine was used not only in pro­duc­tion cars but also in their race cars. The 2.1 L in­line five-cylin­der en­gine was used as a base for the rally cars in the 1980s, pro­vid­ing well over 400 horse­power (300 kilo­watts) after mod­i­fi­ca­tion. Be­fore 1990, there were en­gines pro­duced with a dis­place­ment be­tween 2.0 L and 2.3 L. This range of en­gine ca­pac­ity al­lowed for both fuel econ­omy and power.

For the ul­tra-lux­ury ver­sion of its Audi A8 full­size lux­ury flag­ship sedan, the Audi A8L W12, Audi uses the Volk­swa­gen Group W12 en­gine in­stead of the con­ven­tional V12 en­gine fa­vored by ri­vals Mer­cedes-Benz and BMW. The W12 en­gine con­fig­u­ra­tion (also known as a “WR12”) is cre­ated by form­ing two imag­i­nary nar­row-an­gle 15° VR6 en­gines at an angle of 72°, and the nar­row angle of each set of cylin­ders al­lows just two over­head camshafts to drive each pair of banks, so just four are needed in total. The ad­van­tage of the W12 en­gine is its com­pact pack­ag­ing, al­low­ing Audi to build a 12-cylin­der sedan with all-wheel drive, whereas a con­ven­tional V12 en­gine could have only a rear-wheel drive con­fig­u­ra­tion as it would have no space in the en­gine bay for a dif­fer­en­tial and other com­po­nents re­quired to power the front wheels. In fact, the 6.0 L W12 in the Audi A8L W12 is smaller in over­all di­men­sions than the 4.2 L V8 that pow­ers the Audi A8 4.2 variants. The 2011 Audi A8 de­buted a re­vised 6.3-litre ver­sion of the W12 (WR12) en­gine with 500 PS (370 kW; 490 hp).

Fuel Stratified Injection

New mod­els of the A3, A4, A6 and A8 have been in­tro­duced, with the age­ing 1.8-litre en­gine now hav­ing been re­placed by new Fuel Strat­i­fied In­jec­tion (FSI) en­gines. Nearly every pe­tro­leum burn­ing model in the range now in­cor­po­rates this fuel-sav­ing tech­nol­ogy.

2007 V8 FSI engine

Direct-Shift Gearbox

In 2003 Volk­swa­gen in­tro­duced the Di­rect-Shift Gear­box (DSG), a type of dual clutch trans­mis­sion. It is an au­to­mated semi-au­to­matic trans­mis­sion, dri­vable like a con­ven­tional au­to­matic trans­mis­sion. Based on the gear­box found in the Group B S1, the sys­tem in­cludes dual elec­tro­hy­drauli­cally con­trolled clutches in­stead of a torque con­verter. This is im­ple­mented in some VW Golfs, Audi A3, Audi A4 and TT mod­els where DSG is called S-tronic.

LED daytime running lights

Be­gin­ning in 2005, Audi has im­ple­mented white LED tech­nol­ogy as day­time run­ning lights (DRL) in their prod­ucts. The dis­tinc­tive shape of the DRLs has be­come a trade­mark of sorts. LEDs were first in­tro­duced on the Audi A8 W12, the world’s first pro­duc­tion car to have LED DRLs, and have since spread through­out the en­tire model range. The LEDs are pre­sent on some Audi bill­boards.

Since 2010, Audi has also of­fered the LED tech­nol­ogy in low- and high-beam head­lights.

The DRL (LED Daytime Running Lights) in an Audi A4 B8

Multi Media Interface

Multi Media Interface-Menu on Audi virtual cockpit, 1984 Audi TT Mk3

Audi cars

2012 Audi A1 Sportback 1.4 TFSI Ambition – A1 – Supermini –

3-door Hatchback – 5-door Hatchback – Sportback (5-door Hatchback)

2017 Audi A3 SportBack 2.0 TFSI S-line – A3 – Small Family car

3-door Hatchback – Saloon (Sedan) – Sportback (5-door Hatchback) – Cabriolet

2017 Audi A4 (8W) S-Line quattro sedan – A4 – Compact
Executive Car – Saloon (Sedan) – Avant (Estate/Wagon) – Allroad (Crossover
Estate/Wagon)

2016 Audi A5 II coupé – A5 – Compact
Executive Car – Coupé – Sportback (5-door Hatchback) – Cabriolet (Convertible)

2017 Audi A6 2.0 – A6 – Executive Car – Saloon (Sedan) – Avant (Estate/Wagon) – Allroad (Crossover Estate/Wagon)

2018 Audi A7 55 TFSI Quattro – A7 – Executive Car – Sportback (5-door Hatchback)

2017 Audi A8L 55 TFSI Quattro D5 – A8 – Full-size
Luxury Car – Saloon (Sedan)

Audi coupés and SUVs

2015 Audi TT (20444900760) – TT – Compact Sports Car – Coupé – Roadster (Convertible)

2015 Audi R8 V10 Plus – R8 – Sports Car – Coupé – Spyder (Convertible)

2017 Audi Q2 Sport TDi 1.6 – Q2 – Subcompact Crossover SUV – SUV

2016 Audi Q3 quattro Sport (Facelift) – Q3 – Compact Crossover SUV – SUV

2016 Audi Q5 2.0 T quattro – Q5 – Compact Crossover SUV – SUV

2016 Audi Q7 3.0 TDI quattro S-line (II) – Q7 – Full-size Crossover SUV – SUV

2018 Audi Q8 – Q8 – Full-size Crossover SUV – SUV

Audi S and RS models

S (Sport) models

2018 Audi S1 Competition Quattro 2.0 – S1 – Supermini – 3-door Hatchback – Sportback (5-door Hatchback)

2017 Audi S3 (26176952539) – S3 – Small Family Car – 3-door Hatchback – Sportback (5-door Hatchback)

2015 Audi S4 IAA 2015 – S4 – Compact Executive Car – Saloon (Sedan) – Avant(Estate/Wagon)

2018 Audi S5 TFSi Quattro Automatic 3.0 – S5 – Compact Executive Car – Coupé – Cabriolet (Convertible) – Sportback (5-door Hatchback

2015 Audi S6 – S6 – Executive Car – Saloon (Sedan) – Avant (Estate/Wagon)

2015 Audi S7 Sportback C7 facelift 03 – S7 – Executive Car – Sportback (5-door Hatchback)

2015 Audi S8 plus – S8 – Full-size Luxury Car – Saloon (Sedan)

2015 Audi TTS (8S) – TTS – Compact Sports Car – Coupé – Roadster (Convertible)

2018 Audi SQ5 3.0 – SQ5 – Mid-size SUV – Crossover

2017 Audi SQ7 – SQ7 – Full-size SUV – Crossover

RS (RennSport/Racing Sport) models

2018 Audi TT RS Coupe – TT RS – Compact Sports Car – Coupé – Roadster (Convertible)

2016 Audi RS Q3 performance – RS Q3 – Compact SUV – Crossover

2016 Audi RS 3 quattro – RS 3 – Small Family Car – Saloon (Sedan) – 5-door Hatchback

2017 Audi RS4 Avant

2018 Audi RS4 Avant – RS 4 – Compact Executive Car – Avant (Estate/Wagon)

2017 Audi RS5 Coupe Quattro – RS 5 – Compact Executive Car – Coupé – Cabriolet (Convertible)

2015 Audi RS6 Avant TFSi Quattro Automatic 4.0 – RS 6 – Executive Car – Avant (Estate/Wagon)

2016 Audi RS7 Sportback Performance Quattro – RS 7 – Executive Car – Sportback (5-door Liftback)

Electric vehicles

Further information: List of Audi vehicles § Concept models

Audi is plan­ning an al­liance with the Japan­ese elec­tron­ics giant Sanyo to de­velop a pilot hy­brid elec­tric pro­ject for the Volk­swa­gen Group. The al­liance could re­sult in Sanyo bat­ter­ies and other elec­tronic com­po­nents being used in fu­ture mod­els of the Volk­swa­gen Group. Con­cept elec­tric ve­hi­cles un­veiled to date in­clude the Audi A1 Sport­back Concept, Audi A4 TDI Con­cept E, and the fully elec­tric Audi e-tron Con­cept Supercar.

Production figures

	A1	A2	A3	A4	A5	A6	A7	A8	Q3	Q5	Q7	TT	R8
1998	—	—	143,974	271,152	—	174,867	—	15,355	—	—	—	13,682	—
1999	—	—	143,505	252,514	—	162,573	—	14,636	—	—	—	52,579	—
2000	—	32,164	136,141	231,869	—	180,715	—	12,894	—	—	—	56,776	—
2001	—	49,369	131,082	308,778	—	186,467	—	11,708	—	—	—	39,349	—
2002	—	37,578	125,538	360,267	—	178,773	—	10,942	—	—	—	34,711	—
2003	—	27,323	159,417	353,836	—	168,612	—	21,748	—	—	—	32,337	—
2004	—	19,745	181,274	345,231	—	195,529	—	22,429	—	—	—	23,605	—
2005	—	10,026	224,961	337,705	—	215,437	—	21,515	—	—	1,185	12,307	—
2006	—	—	231,752	341,110	487	229,021	—	22,468	—	—	72,169	23,675	164
2007	—	—	231,117	289,806	25,549	243,842	—	22,182	—	162	77,395	56,766	4,125
2008	—	—	222,164	378,885	57,650	214,074	—	20,140	—	20,324	59,008	41,789	5,656
2009	—	—	206,747	282,033	84,883	182,090	—	8,599	—	105,074	27,929	22,821	2,101
2010	51,937	—	198,974	306,291	111,270	211,256	8,496	22,435	—	154,604	48,937	26,217	3,485
2011	117,566	—	189,068	321,045	111,758	241,862	37,301	38,542	19,613	183,678	53,703	25,508	3,551
2012	123,111	—	164,666	329,759	103,357	284,888	28,950	35,932	106,918	209,799	54,558	21,880	2,241

• Data from 1998 to 2010. Figures for different body types/versions of models have been merged to create overall figures for each model.

Motorsport

Audi has com­peted in var­i­ous forms of mo­tor­sports. Audi’s tra­di­tion in mo­tor­sport began with their for­mer com­pany Auto Union in the 1930s. In the 1990s, Audi found suc­cess in the Tour­ing and Super Tour­ing cat­e­gories of motor rac­ing after suc­cess in cir­cuit rac­ing in North Amer­ica.

Rallying

Main article: Audi Sport WRC results

Walter Röhrl with his Quattro A2 during the 1984 Rally Portugal

In 1980, Audi re­leased the Quat­tro, a four-wheel drive (4WD) tur­bocharged car that went on to win ral­lies and races world­wide. It is con­sid­ered one of the most sig­nif­i­cant rally cars of all time, be­cause it was one of the first to take ad­van­tage of the then-re­cently changed rules which al­lowed the use of four-wheel drive in com­pe­ti­tion rac­ing. Many crit­ics doubted the vi­a­bil­ity of four-wheel drive rac­ers, think­ing them to be too heavy and com­plex, yet the Quat­tro was to be­come a suc­cess­ful car. Lead­ing its first rally it went off the road, how­ever the rally world had been served no­tice 4WD was the fu­ture. The Quat­tro went on to achieve much suc­cess in the World Rally Cham­pi­onship. It won the 1983 (Hannu Mikkola) and the 1984 (Stig Blomqvist) dri­vers’ ti­tles, and brought Audi the man­u­fac­tur­ers’ title in 1982 and 1984.

Audi Quattro S1 driven at the 2007 Rallye Deutschland

In 1984, Audi launched the short-wheel­base Sport Quat­trowhich dom­i­nated rally races in Monte Carlo and Swe­den, with Audi tak­ing all podium places, but suc­cumbed to prob­lems fur­ther into WRC con­tention. In 1985, after an­other sea­son mired in mediocre fin­ishes, Wal­ter Röhrl fin­ished the sea­son in his Sport Quat­tro S1, and helped place Audi sec­ond in the man­u­fac­tur­ers’ points. Audi also re­ceived rally ho­n­ours in the Hong Kong to Bei­jing rally in that same year. Michèle Mou­ton, the only fe­male dri­ver to win a round of the World Rally Cham­pi­onship and a dri­ver for Audi, took the Sport Quat­tro S1, now sim­ply called the “S1”, and raced in the Pikes Peak In­ter­na­tional Hill Climb. The 1,439-me­tre (4,721 ft) climb race pits a dri­ver and car to drive to the sum­mit of the 4,302-me­tre (14,114 ft) Pikes Peak moun­tain in Col­orado, and in 1985, Michèle Mou­ton set a new record of 11:25.39, and being the first woman to set a Pikes Peak record. In 1986, Audi for­mally left in­ter­na­tional rally rac­ing fol­low­ing an ac­ci­dent in Por­tu­gal in­volv­ing dri­ver Joaquim San­tos in his Ford RS200. San­tos swerved to avoid hit­ting spec­ta­tors in the road, and left the track into the crowd of spec­ta­tors on the side, killing three and in­jur­ing 30. Bobby Unser used an Audi in that same year to claim a new record for the Pikes Peak Hill Climb at 11:09.22.

In 1987, Wal­ter Röhrl claimed the title for Audi set­ting a new Pikes Peak In­ter­na­tional Hill Climb record of 10:47.85 in his Audi S1, which he had re­tired from the WRC two years ear­lier. The Audi S1 em­ployed Audi’s time-tested in­line-five-cylin­der tur­bocharged en­gine, with the final ver­sion gen­er­at­ing 441 kW (600 PS; 591 bhp). The en­gine was mated to a six-speed gear­box and ran on Audi’s fa­mous four-wheel drive sys­tem. All of Audi’s top dri­vers drove this car; Hannu Mikkola, Stig Blomqvist, Wal­ter Röhrl and Michèle Mou­ton. This Audi S1 started the range of Audi ‘S’ cars, which now rep­re­sents an in­creased level of sports-per­for­mance equip­ment within the main­stream Audi model range.

In the United States

As Audi moved away from ral­ly­ing and into cir­cuit rac­ing, they chose to move first into Amer­ica with the Trans-Am in 1988.

In 1989, Audi moved to In­ter­na­tional Motor Sports As­so­ci­a­tion (IMSA) GTO with the Audi 90, how­ever as they avoided the two major en­durance events (Day­tona and Se­bring) de­spite win­ning on a reg­u­lar basis, they would lose out on the title.

Touring cars

In 1990, hav­ing com­pleted their ob­jec­tive to mar­ket cars in North Amer­ica, Audi re­turned to Eu­rope, turn­ing first to the Deutsche Touren­wa­gen Meis­ter­schaft (DTM) se­ries with the Audi V8, and then in 1993, being un­will­ing to build cars for the new for­mula, they turned their at­ten­tion to the fast-grow­ing Super Tour­ing se­ries, which are a se­ries of na­tional cham­pi­onships. Audi first en­tered in the French Su­per­tourisme and Ital­ian Su­per­tur­ismo. In the fol­low­ing year, Audi would switch to the Ger­man Super Touren­wa­gen Cup (known as STW), and then to British Tour­ing Car Cham­pi­onship (BTCC) the year after that.

The Fédéra­tion In­ter­na­tionale de l’Au­to­mo­bile (FIA), hav­ing dif­fi­culty reg­u­lat­ing the quat­tro four-wheel drive sys­tem, and the im­pact it had on the com­peti­tors, would even­tu­ally ban all four-wheel drive cars from com­pet­ing in 1998, but by then, Audi switched all their works ef­forts to sports car rac­ing.

By 2000, Audi would still com­pete in the US with their RS4 for the SCCA Speed World GT Chal­lenge, through dealer/team Cham­pion Rac­ingcom­pet­ing against Corvettes, Vipers, and smaller BMWs (where it is one of the few se­ries to per­mit 4WD cars). In 2003, Cham­pion Rac­ing en­tered an RS6. Once again, the quat­tro four-wheel drive was su­pe­rior, and Cham­pion Audi won the cham­pi­onship. They re­turned in 2004 to de­fend their title, but a new­comer, Cadil­lac with the new Omega Chas­sis CTS-V, gave them a run for their money. After four vic­to­ries in a row, the Audis were sanc­tioned with sev­eral neg­a­tive changes that deeply af­fected the car’s per­for­mance. Namely, added bal­last weights, and Cham­pion Audi de­cid­ing to go with dif­fer­ent tyres, and re­duc­ing the boost pres­sure of the tur­bocharger.

In 2004, after years of com­pet­ing with the TT-R in the re­vi­talised DTM se­ries, with pri­va­teer team Abt Racing/Chris­t­ian Abt tak­ing the 2002 title with Lau­rent Aïello, Audi re­turned as a full fac­tory ef­fort to tour­ing car rac­ing by en­ter­ing two fac­tory sup­ported Joest Rac­ing A4 DTMcars.

24 Hours of Le Mans

Further information: List of Audi vehicles § Le Mans prototypes

Audi R10 TDI

Audi began rac­ing pro­to­type sports­cars in 1999, de­but­ing at the Le Mans 24 hour. Two car con­cepts were de­vel­oped and raced in their first sea­son – the Audi R8R (open-cock­pit ‘road­ster’ pro­to­type) and the Audi R8C (closed-cock­pit ‘coupé’ GT-pro­to­type). The R8R scored a cred­i­ble podium on its rac­ing debut at Le Mans and was the con­cept which Audi con­tin­ued to de­velop into the 2000 sea­son due to favourable rules for open-cock­pit pro­to­types.

How­ever, most of the com­peti­tors (such as BMW, Toy­ota, Mer­cedes and Nis­san) re­tired at the end of 1999. The fac­tory-sup­ported Joest Rac­ing team won at Le Mans three times in a row with the Audi R8 (2000–2002), as well as win­ning every race in the Amer­i­can Le Mans Se­ries in its first year. Audi also sold the car to cus­tomer teams such as Cham­pion Rac­ing.

In 2003, two Bent­ley Speed 8s, with en­gines de­signed by Audi, and dri­ven by Joest dri­vers loaned to the fel­low Volk­swa­gen Group com­pany, com­peted in the GTP class, and fin­ished the race in the top two po­si­tions, while the Cham­pion Rac­ing R8 fin­ished third over­all, and first in the LM­P900 class. Audi re­turned to the win­ner’s podium at the 2004 race, with the top three fin­ish­ers all dri­ving R8s: Audi Sport Japan Team Goh fin­ished first, Audi Sport UK Veloqx sec­ond, and Cham­pion Rac­ing third.

At the 2005 24 Hours of Le Mans, Cham­pion Rac­ing en­tered two R8s, along with an R8 from the Audi PlaySta­tion Team Oreca. The R8s (which were built to old LM­P900 reg­u­la­tions) re­ceived a nar­rower air inlet re­stric­tor, re­duc­ing power, and an ad­di­tional 50 kg (110 lb) of weight com­pared to the newer LMP1 chas­sis. On av­er­age, the R8s were about 2–3 sec­onds off pace com­pared to the Pescarolo–Judd. But with a team of ex­cel­lent dri­vers and ex­pe­ri­ence, both Cham­pion R8s were able to take first and third, while the Oreca team took fourth. The Cham­pion team was also the first Amer­i­can team to win Le Mans since the Gulf Ford GTs in 1967. This also ends the long era of the R8; how­ever, its re­place­ment for 2006, called the Audi R10 TDI, was un­veiled on 13 De­cem­ber 2005.

The R10 TDI em­ployed many new and in­no­v­a­tive fea­tures, the most no­table being the twin-tur­bocharged di­rect in­jec­tion diesel en­gine. It was first raced in the 2006 12 Hours of Se­bring as a race-test in prepa­ra­tion for the 2006 24 Hours of Le Mans, which it later went on to win. Audi has been on the fore­front of sports car rac­ing, claim­ing a his­toric win in the first diesel sports car at 12 Hours of Se­bring (the car was de­vel­oped with a Diesel en­gine due to ACO reg­u­la­tions that favor diesel en­gines). As well as win­ning the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2006 mak­ing his­tory, the R10 TDI has also shown its ca­pa­bil­i­ties by beat­ing the Peu­geot 908 HDi FAP in 2007, and beat­ing Peu­geot again in 2008, (how­ever Peu­geot won the 24h in 2009) and, in a podium clean-sweep by prov­ing its re­li­a­bil­ity through­out the race (com­pared to all four 908 en­tries re­tired be­fore the end of the race) while break­ing a new dis­tance record (set way back by the Porsche 917K of Mar­tini Rac­ing in 1971), in 2010 with the R15 TDI Plus.

Audi’s sports car rac­ing suc­cess would con­tinue with the Audi R18‘s vic­tory at the 2011 24 Hours of Le Mans. Audi Sport Team Joest‘s Benoît Tréluyer earned Audi their first pole po­si­tion in five years while the team’s sis­ter car locked out the front row. Early ac­ci­dents elim­i­nated two of Audi’s three en­tries, but the sole re­main­ing Audi R18 TDI of Tréluyer, Mar­cel Fässler, and André Lot­terer held off the trio of Peu­geot 908s to claim vic­tory by a mar­gin of 13.8 sec­onds.

Results

Car	Year	1999	2000	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015	2016
1	Position	4	3	1	1	4	3	3	3	1	6	3	3	Ret	1	5	2	3	4
2		3	1	2	2	3	1	1	1	Ret	1	Ret	2	1	2	1	1	4	3
3		Ret	2	Ret	3	Ret	5	4		Ret	4	17	1	Ret	5	3	Ret	7
4		Ret		Ret	7		2								3

American Le Mans Series

Audi en­tered a fac­tory rac­ing team run by Joest Rac­ing into the Amer­i­can Le Mans Se­ries under the Audi Sport North Amer­ica name in 2000. This was a suc­cess­ful op­er­a­tion with the team win­ning on its debut in the se­ries at the 2000 12 Hours of Se­bring. Fac­tory backed Audi R8s were the dom­i­nant car in ALMS tak­ing 25 vic­to­ries be­tween 2000 and the end of the 2002 sea­son. In 2003 Audi sold cus­tomer cars to Cham­pion Rac­ing as well as con­tin­u­ing to race the fac­tory Audi Sport North Amer­ica team. Cham­pion Rac­ing won many races as a pri­vate team run­ning Audi R8s and even­tu­ally re­placed Team Joest as the Audi Sport North Amer­ica be­tween 2006 and 2008. Since 2009 Audi has not taken part in full Amer­i­can Le Mans Se­ries Cham­pi­onships, but has com­peted in the se­ries open­ing races at Se­bring, using the 12-hour race as a test for Le Mans, and also as part of the 2012 FIA World En­durance Cham­pi­onship sea­son cal­en­dar.

Results

Year	Manufacturer	Chassis	Team	Rd1	Rd2	Rd3	Rd4	Rd5	Rd6	Rd7	Rd8	Rd9	Rd10	Rd11	Rd12
2000	Audi	R8
			Audi Sport North America	2	20	3	Ret	1	1	2	1	1	1	2	1
				1	6	4	3	2	Ret	1	4	2	2	1	15
2001	Audi	R8	Audi Sport North America	1	1	1	1	1	5	Ret	2	Ret	Ret
				2	2	2	2	2	2	1	4	1	1
2002	Audi	R8	Audi Sport North America	5	14	1	2	3	2	Ret	1	1	6
				1		2	1	2	1	1	4	3	1
2003	Audi	R8	Audi Sport North America	1	2	2	1	1	7	1	2	3
			Champion Racing	2	1	3	2	20	1	4	1	1
2004	Audi	R8	Audi Sport UK	1
				2
			Champion Racing	3	1	1	1	1	2	1	1	1
2005	Audi	R8	Champion Racing	1	1	18	1	3	Ret	3	2	7	4
				2	3	3	2	1	1	1	3	1	2
2006	Audi	R8	Audi Sport North America		1	3	1
		R10		Ret				1	2	1	4	7	2
				1				4	1	2	1	1	1
2007	Audi	R10	Audi Sport North America	4	1	7	3	2	5	5	2	2	3	1	1
				1	2	12	6	23	3	3	4	2	17	3
2008	Audi	R10	Audi Sport North America	3	Ret	2	Ret	21	2	2	2	DSQ	1	2
				6	1	1	7	4	1	1	1	Ret	3	1
2009	Audi	R15	Audi Sport North America	5
				4
2010	Audi	R15	Audi Sport North America	1
				3
2012	Audi	R18	Audi Sport Team Joest	16
				1
				2
2013	Audi	R18	Audi Sport Team Joest	1
				2

European Le Mans Series

Audi par­tic­i­pated in the 2003 1000km of Le Mans which was a one-off sports car race in prepa­ra­tion for the 2004 Eu­ro­pean Le Mans Se­ries. The fac­tory team Audi Sport UK won races and the cham­pi­onship in the 2004 sea­son but Audi was un­able to match their sweep­ing suc­cess of Audi Sport North Amer­ica in the Amer­i­can Le Mans Se­ries, partly due to the ar­rival of a fac­tory com­peti­tor in LMP1, Peu­geot. The French man­u­fac­turer’s 908 HDi FAP be­came the car to beat in the se­ries from 2008 on­wards with 20 LMP wins. How­ever, Audi were able to se­cure the cham­pi­onship in 2008 even though Peu­geot scored more race vic­to­ries in the season.

Results

Year	Manufacturer	Chassis	Team	Rd1	Rd2	Rd3	Rd4	Rd5
2003	Audi	R8	Audi Sport Japan	1
2004	Audi	R8	Audi Sport UK	2	1	1	Ret
				1	2	3	1
			Audi Sport Japan	3	4	2	2
2005	Audi	R8	Team Oreca	Ret		1	2	2
2008	Audi	R10	Audi Sport Team Joest	5	6	4	4	1
				2	2	2	3	4
2010	Audi	R15	Audi Sport Team Joest	1	3			Ret
					5			3
					12

World Endurance Championship

2012

In 2012, the FIA sanc­tioned a World En­durance Cham­pi­onship which would be or­gan­ised by the ACO as a con­tin­u­a­tion of the ILMC. Audi com­peted won the first WEC race at Se­bring and fol­lowed this up with a fur­ther three suc­ces­sive wins, in­clud­ing the 2012 24 Hours of Le Mans. Audi scored a final 5th vic­tory in the 2012 WEC in Bahrain and were able to win the in­au­gural WEC Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ Cham­pi­onship.

2013

As de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons, Audi once again en­tered the Audi R18 e-tron quat­tro chas­sis into the 2013 WEC and the team won the first five con­sec­u­tive races, in­clud­ing the 2013 24 Hours of Le Mans. The vic­tory at Round 5, Cir­cuit of the Amer­i­cas, was of par­tic­u­lar sig­nif­i­cance as it marked the 100th win for Audi in Le Mans prototypes. Audi se­cured their sec­ond con­sec­u­tive WEC Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ Cham­pi­onship at Round 6 after tak­ing sec­ond place and half points in the red-flagged Fuji race.

2014

For the 2014 sea­son Audi en­tered a re­designed and up­graded R18 e-tron quat­tro which fea­tured a 2 MJ en­ergy re­cov­ery sys­tem. As de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons, Audi would once again face a chal­lenge in LMP1 from Toy­ota, and ad­di­tion­ally from Porsche who re­turned to en­durance rac­ing after a 16-year ab­sence. The sea­son open­ing 6hrs of Sil­ver­stone was a dis­as­ter for Audi who saw both cars re­tire from the race, mark­ing the first time that an Audi car has failed to score a podium in a World En­durance Cham­pi­onship race.

Results

Year	Manufacturer	Chassis	SEB	SPA	LMS	SIL	SÃO	BHR	FUJ	SHA	Total points	Pos.
2012	Audi	R18 e-tron quattro	1	1	1	1	2	1	2	2	173 (209)	1st

Year	Manufacturer	Chassis	SIL	SPA	LMS	SÃO	COA	FUJ	SHA	BHR	Total points	Pos.
2013	Audi	R18 e-tron quattro	1	1	1	1	1	2	1	2	207 (207)	1st

Year	Manufacturer	Chassis	Car	SIL	SPA	LMS	COA	FUJ	SHA	BHR	SÃU	Total points	Pos.
2014	Audi	R18 e-tron quattro	1	Ret	2	1	1	5	4	4	3	244	2nd
			2	Ret	5	2	2	6	5	5	5

Formula E

Audi pro­vide fac­tory sup­port to Abt Sport­sline in the FIA For­mula E Cham­pi­onship, The team com­peted under the title of Audi Sport Abt For­mula E Team in the in­au­gural 2014-15 For­mula E sea­son. On 13 Feb­ru­ary 2014 the team an­nounced its dri­ver line up as Daniel Abtand World En­durance Cham­pi­onship dri­ver Lucas di Grassi.

Team	Chassis	Driver	CHI	MAL	URU	ARG	TBA	MIA	LBH	MON	GER	GBR	Total points
Audi Sport Abt Formula E Team	Spark-Renault SRT 01E	Daniel Abt	10	10	15			2015					62
		Lucas di Grassi	1	2	3			2015

Formula One

Audi has been linked to For­mula One in re­cent years but has al­ways re­sisted due to the com­pany’s opin­ion that it is not rel­e­vant to road cars, but hy­brid power unit tech­nol­ogy has been adopted into the sport, sway­ing the com­pany’s view and en­cour­ag­ing re­search into the pro­gram by for­mer Fer­rari team prin­ci­pal Ste­fano Domeni­cali.

Marketing

Branding

The logo used by Audi, 1985–2009

The typeface Audi Sans (used 1997-2009)

The typeface Audi Type (used since 2009)

The Audi em­blem is four over­lap­ping rings that rep­re­sent the four mar­ques of Auto Union. The Audi em­blem sym­bol­ises the amal­ga­ma­tion of Audi with DKW, Horch and Wan­derer: the first ring from the left rep­re­sents Audi, the sec­ond rep­re­sents DKW, third is Horch, and the fourth and last ring Wanderer. The de­sign is pop­u­larly be­lieved to have been the idea of Klaus von Oertzen, the di­rec­tor of sales at Wan­derer – when Berlin was cho­sen as the host city for the 1936 Sum­mer Olympics and that a form of the Olympic logo sym­bol­ized the newly es­tab­lished Auto Union’s de­sire to succeed. Some­what iron­i­cally, the In­ter­na­tional Olympic Com­mit­teelater sued Audi in the In­ter­na­tional Trade­mark Court in 1995, where they lost.

The orig­i­nal “Audi” script, with the dis­tinc­tive slanted tails on the “A” and “d” was cre­ated for the his­toric Audi com­pany in 1920 by the fa­mous graphic de­signer Lu­cian Bern­hard, and was res­ur­rected when Volk­swa­gen re­vived the brand in 1965. Fol­low­ing the demise of NSU in 1977, less promi­nence was given to the four rings, in pref­er­ence to the “Audi” script en­cased within a black (later red) el­lipse, and was com­monly dis­played next to the Volk­swa­gen roundel when the two brands shared a dealer net­work under the V.A.G ban­ner. The el­lipse (known as the Audi Oval) was phased out after 1994, when Audi formed its own in­de­pen­dent dealer net­work, and promi­nence was given back to the four rings – at the same time Audi Sans (a de­riv­a­tive of Univers) was adopted as the font for all mar­ket­ing ma­te­ri­als, cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions and was also used in the ve­hi­cles them­selves.

As part of Audi’s cen­ten­nial cel­e­bra­tion in 2009, the com­pany up­dated the logo, chang­ing the font to left-aligned Audi Type, and al­ter­ing the shad­ing for the over­lap­ping rings. The re­vised logo was de­signed by Rayan Abdullah.

Audi de­vel­oped a Cor­po­rate Sound con­cept, with Audi Sound Stu­dio de­signed for pro­duc­ing the Cor­po­rate Sound. The Cor­po­rate Sound pro­ject began with sound agency Klangerfinder GmbH & Co KG and s12 GmbH. Audio sam­ples were cre­ated in Klangerfinder’s sound stu­dio in Stuttgart, be­com­ing part of Audi Sound Stu­dio col­lec­tion. Other Audi Sound Stu­dio com­po­nents in­clude The Brand Music Pool, The Brand Voice. Audi also de­vel­oped Sound Brand­ing Toolkit in­clud­ing cer­tain in­stru­ments, sound themes, rhythm and car sounds which all are sup­posed to re­flect the AUDI sound character.

Audi started using a beat­ing heart sound trade­mark be­gin­ning in 1996. An up­dated heart­beat sound logo, de­vel­oped by agen­cies KLANGERFINDER GmbH & Co KG of Stuttgart and S12 GmbH of Mu­nich, was first used in 2010 in an Audi A8 com­mer­cial with the slo­gan “The Art of Progress.”

Slogans

Audi’s cor­po­rate tagline is Vor­sprung durch Technik, mean­ing “Progress through Technology”. The Ger­man-lan­guage tagline is used in many Eu­ro­pean coun­tries, in­clud­ing the United King­dom, and in other mar­kets, such as Latin Amer­ica, Ocea­nia and parts of Asia in­clud­ing Japan. A few years ago, the North Amer­i­can tagline was “In­no­va­tion through technology”, but in Canada the Ger­man tagline Vor­sprung durch Technik was used in ad­ver­tis­ing. Since 2007, Audi has used the slo­gan “Truth in En­gi­neer­ing” in the U.S. How­ever, since the Audi emis­sions test­ing scan­dal came to light in Sep­tem­ber 2015, this slo­gan was lam­basted for being dis­cor­dant with reality. In fact, just hours after dis­graced Volk­swa­gen CEO Mar­tin Win­terkorn ad­mit­ted to cheat­ing on emis­sions data, an ad­ver­tise­ment dur­ing the 2015 Prime­time Emmy Awards pro­moted Audi’s lat­est ad­vances in low emis­sions tech­nol­ogy with Ker­mit the Frog stat­ing, “It’s not that easy being green.”

It was first used in Eng­lish-lan­guage ad­ver­tis­ing after Sir John Hegarty of the Bar­tle Bogle Hegarty ad­ver­tis­ing agency vis­ited the Audi fac­tory in 1982. In the orig­i­nal British tele­vi­sion com­mer­cials, the phrase was voiced by Ge­of­frey Palmer. After its re­peated use in ad­ver­tis­ing cam­paigns, the phrase found its way into pop­u­lar cul­ture, in­clud­ing the British com­edy Only Fools and Horses, the U2 song “Zooropa” and the Blur song “Park­life“. Sim­i­lar-sound­ing phrases have also been used, in­clud­ing as the punch­line for a joke in the movie Lock, Stock, and Two Smok­ing Bar­rels and in the British TV se­ries Peep Show.

Typography

Audi Sans (based on Univers Ex­tended) was orig­i­nally cre­ated in 1997 by Ole Schäfer for MetaDe­sign. MetaDe­sign was later com­mis­sioned for a new cor­po­rate type­face called Audi Type, de­signed by Paul van der Laan and Pieter van Ros­malen of Bold Mon­day. The font began to ap­pear in Audi’s 2009 prod­ucts and mar­ket­ing materials.

Sponsorships

Audi sponsors Bundesliga club Bayern Munich

Audi is a strong part­ner of dif­fer­ent kinds of sports. In foot­ball, long part­ner­ships exist be­tween Audi and do­mes­tic clubs in­clud­ing Bay­ern Mu­nich, Ham­burger SV, 1. FC Nürn­berg, Hertha BSC, and Borus­sia Mönchenglad­bach and in­ter­na­tional clubs in­clud­ing Chelsea, Real Madrid, FC Barcelona, A.C. Milan, AFC Ajax and Per­spo­lis. Audi also spon­sors win­ter sports: The Audi FIS Alpine Ski World Cup is named after the com­pany. Ad­di­tion­ally, Audi sup­ports the Ger­man Ski As­so­ci­a­tion (DSV) as well as the alpine ski­ing na­tional teams of Switzer­land, Swe­den, Fin­land, France, Liecht­en­stein, Italy, Aus­tria and the U.S. For al­most two decades, Audi fos­ters golf sport: for ex­am­ple with the Audi quat­tro Cup and the Hy­poVere­ins­bank Ladies Ger­man Open pre­sented by Audi. In sail­ing, Audi is en­gaged in the Med­cup re­gatta and sup­ports the team Luna Rossa dur­ing the Louis Vuit­ton Pa­cific Se­ries and also is the pri­mary spon­sor of the Melges 20 sail­boat. Fur­ther, Audi spon­sors the re­gional teams ERC In­gol­stadt (hockey) and FC In­gol­stadt 04 (soc­cer). In 2009, the year of Audi’s 100th an­niver­sary, the com­pany or­ga­nized the Audi Cup for the first time. Audi also spon­sor the New York Yan­kees as well. In Oc­to­ber 2010 they agreed to a three spon­sor­ship year-deal with Ever­ton. Audi also spon­sors the Eng­land PoloTeam and holds the Audi Polo Awards.

Multitronic campaign

Audi Centre Sydney, Zetland, New South Wales, Australia

In 2001, Audi pro­moted the new mul­ti­tronic con­tin­u­ously vari­able trans­mis­sion with tele­vi­sion com­mer­cials through­out Eu­rope, fea­tur­ing an im­per­son­ator of mu­si­cian and actor Elvis Pres­ley. A pro­to­typ­i­cal dash­board fig­ure – later named “Wackel-Elvis” (“Wob­ble Elvis” or “Wob­bly Elvis”) – ap­peared in the com­mer­cials to demon­strate the smooth ride in an Audi equipped with the mul­ti­tronic trans­mis­sion. The dash­board fig­ure was orig­i­nally in­tended for use in the com­mer­cials only, but after they aired the de­mand for Wackel-Elvis fans grew among fans and the fig­ure was mass-pro­duced in China and mar­keted by Audi in their fac­tory out­let store.

Audi TDI

As part of Audi’s at­tempt to pro­mote its Diesel tech­nol­ogy in 2009, the com­pany began Audi Mileage Marathon. The dri­ving tour fea­tured a fleet of 23 Audi TDI ve­hi­cles from 4 mod­els (Audi Q73.0 TDI, Audi Q5 3.0 TDI, Audi A4 3.0 TDI, Audi A3 Sport­back 2.0 TDI with S tronic trans­mis­sion) trav­el­ling across the Amer­i­can con­ti­nent from New York to Los An­ge­les, pass­ing major cities like Chicago, Dal­las and Las Vegas dur­ing the 13 daily stages, as well as nat­ural won­ders in­clud­ing the Rocky Moun­tains, Death Val­ley and the Grand Canyon.

Audi e-tron

The next phase of tech­nol­ogy Audi is de­vel­op­ing is the e-tron elec­tric drive pow­er­train sys­tem. They have shown sev­eral con­cept cars as of March 2010, each with dif­fer­ent lev­els of size and per­for­mance. The orig­i­nal e-tron con­cept shown at the 2009 Frank­furt motor show is based on the plat­form of the R8 and has been sched­uled for lim­ited pro­duc­tion. Power is pro­vided by elec­tric mo­tors at all four wheels. The sec­ond con­cept was shown at the 2010 De­troit Motor Show. Power is pro­vided by two elec­tric mo­tors at the rear axle. This con­cept is also con­sid­ered to be the di­rec­tion for a fu­ture mid-en­gined gas-pow­ered 2-seat per­for­mance coupe. The Audi A1 e-tron con­cept, based on the Audi A1 pro­duc­tion model, is a hy­brid ve­hi­cle with a range ex­tend­ing Wankel ro­tary en­gine to pro­vide power after the ini­tial charge of the bat­tery is de­pleted. It is the only con­cept of the three to have range ex­tend­ing ca­pa­bil­ity. The car is pow­ered through the front wheels, al­ways using elec­tric power.

It is all set to be dis­played at the Auto Expo 2012 in New Delhi, India, from 5 Jan­u­ary. Pow­ered by a 1.4 litre en­gine, and can cover a dis­tance up to 54 km s on a sin­gle charge. The e-tron was also shown in the 2013 block­buster film Iron Man 3 and was dri­ven by Tony Stark (Iron Man).

In video games

In PlaySta­tion Home, the PlaySta­tion 3‘s on­line com­mu­nity-based ser­vice, Audi has sup­ported Home by re­leas­ing a ded­i­cated Home spacein the Eu­ro­pean ver­sion of Home. Audi is the first car­maker to de­velop a space for Home. On 17 De­cem­ber 2009, Audi re­leased the Audi Space as two spaces; the Audi Home Ter­mi­nal and the Audi Ver­ti­cal Run. The Audi Home Ter­mi­nal fea­tures an Audi TV chan­nel de­liv­er­ing video con­tent, an In­ter­net Browser fea­ture, and a view of a city. The Audi Ver­ti­cal Run is where users can ac­cess the mini-game Ver­ti­cal Run, a fu­tur­is­tic mini-game fea­tur­ing Audi’s e-tron con­cept. Play­ers col­lect en­ergy and race for the high­est pos­si­ble speeds and the fastest play­ers earn a place in the Audi apart­ments lo­cated in a large tower in the cen­tre of the Audi Space. In both the Home Ter­mi­nal and Ver­ti­cal Run spaces, there are tele­ports where users can tele­port back and forth be­tween the two spaces. Audi has stated that ad­di­tional con­tent will be added in 2010.

The pictures I collected the last 15 years on the www:

That’s it as far as my pictures go.

See also

• Wanderer (car)
• DKW
• Horch

Notes

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109. ^ “Good night, Posterous” (PDF). Retrieved 14 July 2015.
110. ^ “Eco-Culture”. Audi magazine (3/08): 19.
111. ^ Lavrinc, Damon. Audi planning TT and R8 lightweight ”Sport” models. Autoblog. Retrieved 24 April 2010.
112. ^ “Audi’s ’Truth in Engineering’ ads come back to bite amid probe”. Retrieved 2015-10-03.
113. ^ Webb, Alex. “Audi Airs Mistimed ’Truth in Engineering’ Ads”. Bloomberg.com. Retrieved 2015-10-03.
114. ^ ^ab Rice-Oxley, Mark; Topham, Laurence; Alsaker, Ole (18 September 2012). “Vorsprung durch Technik: how a catchphrase was coined – video”. The Guardian. Retrieved 16 May 2013.
115. ^ Official U2 Website - Zooropa Lyrics
116. ^ “Bold Monday: Audi Type”. boldmonday.com. Archived from the original on 1 September 2010. Retrieved 6 October 2010.
117. ^ “Audi Worldwide > Experience > Sponsoring > Sport”. Audi.com. 11 June 2009. Archived from the original on 23 September 2009. Retrieved 7 July 2009.
118. ^ “FC Bayern”. Fcbayern.t-home.de. 4 March 2009. Retrieved 7 July2009.
119. ^ “Blues agree deal with Audi”. evertonfc.com. 14 October 2010. Retrieved 16 March 2011.
120. ^ “British Polo teams”. Britishpolo.com. Retrieved 8 June 2012.
121. ^ “Audi Polo Awards”. Audi Polo Awards. Retrieved 8 June 2012.
122. ^ “Audi Wackel-Elvis commercial (2001, British version)”. Youtube. Retrieved 2 August 2010.
123. ^ “Audi Wackel-Elvis commercial (2001, German version)”. Youtube. Retrieved 2 August 2010.
124. ^ “Fans Waiting in Line for Release of Wackel-Elvis”. Die Welt (in German). 11 June 2001. Retrieved 2 August 2010.
125. ^ Abuelsamid, Sam (8 September 2008). “Audi to kick off diesel push with cross country Mileage Marathon”. Green.autoblog.com. Retrieved 2 August 2010.
126. ^ Fernandez, Joe (10 December 2009). “Audi to launch PlayStation download game”. Marketing Week. Retrieved 10 December 2009.
127. ^ “Audi creates virtual Audi Space within PlayStation Home”. CNETReviews.

References

• Oswald, Werner (2001). Deutsche Autos 1920–1945, Band (vol) 2 (in German). Motorbuch Verlag. ISBN3-613-02170-6.

External links

• Official website

Volkswagen Group
Ownership	Porsche SE State of Lower Saxony Qatar Holding LLC Capital Group Companies
Divisions and subsidiaries	Passenger cars Audi (99.55%) Audi Sport Bentley Motors Bugatti Lamborghini Porsche SEAT Škoda Volkswagen Commercial vehicles MAN Truck & Bus Navistar International (16.6%) Scania Volkswagen Caminhões e Ônibus Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles Motorcycles Ducati Engines MAN Diesel & Turbo Services Italdesign Giugiaro Geographic Volkswagen Group of America(Electronics Research Laboratory) Volkswagen do Brasil Volkswagen Group China Volkswagen Group Sales India
Shareholdings	FAW-Volkswagen (40%) Here (33.3%) IAV (50%) MAN(75.56%) Navistar International (16.6%) SAIC Volkswagen(50%)
Products and technologies	Platforms Vehicles Engines Diesel: current / discontinued Petrol:current / discontinued North America Technologies BlueMotion Digifant DSG ETKA FSI Pumpe Düse SDI TDI VAG-COM
Discontinued brands	Auto Union DKW Horch NSU Wanderer
Places	Autostadt Ehra-Lessien Factories
People	Ferdinand Porsche (founder) Carl Hahn (Chairman Emeritus) Ivan Hirst (former Managing Director) Rudolf Leiding (former CEO) Kurt Lotz (former CEO) Heinrich Nordhoff (former Managing Director) Ferdinand Piëch (Chairman of the Supervisory Board) Bernd Pischetsrieder (former CEO) Toni Schmücker (former CEO) Martin Winterkorn (former Chairman of the Board of Management) Porsche family (owner)
Motorsport	Teams: Rally teams Series: Formula Volkswagen Germany Jetta TDI Cup Scirocco R-Cup
Other	Volkswagen emissions testing scandal
Category

Audi, a subsidiary of Volkswagen AG
Volkswagen Group marques & companies	Volkswagen Passenger Cars Audi Audi Sport GmbH Bentley Bugatti Ducati Italdesign Automobili Speciali Lamborghini Moia Navistar Porsche SEAT Škoda Scania Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles
Subsidiaries	Audi do Brasil e Cia Audi Hungaria Motor Kft. Audi Senna Ltda. Autogerma S.p.A. Here(33%) Automobili Lamborghini Holding S.p.A Ducati Motor Holding S.p.A. e-tron Audi Sport GmbH
Defunct Audi AG brands	Auto Union DKW Horch NSU Wanderer
Museums	August Horch Museum Zwickau museum mobile
Current models	Sedans A3 S3 RS3 A3 Sportback (e-tron) A4 S4 RS4 A5 S5 RS5 A6 S6 RS6 A7 S7 RS7 A8 (L) S8 Sports Cars TT TTS TT RS R8 (e-tron) Station wagons A4 Avant A6 Avant Hatchbacks A1 S1 Audi A2  A3 Sportback A3 Sport­back e-tron SUVs/Crossovers A4 allroad quattro A6 allroad quattro Q2 Q3 RS Q3 Q5 SQ5 Q7 SQ7 Q7 e-tron Q8
Audi Sport	Audi S: Audi S1 S2 S3 S4 S5 S6 S7 S8 SQ5 SQ7 TTS Audi RS: Audi RS2 Avant RS3 RS4 RS5 RS6 RS7 TT RS RS Q3 Supercar: Audi R8 Spec. ver.: Q7 V12 TDI A8 (L) W12
Future	Q1 Q4 quattro e-tron Q6 Q8 R6
Historic and discontinued models	Audi Front Audi 920 Audi F103 Audi 50 Audi 80/90/4000/5+5 Audi Quattro (Ur-Quattro) Audi Coupé Audi 4000CS quattro Audi 100/200/5000 Audi 100 Coupé S Audi S2 Audi RS2 Avant Audi Ur-S4 & Ur-S6 Audi V8 Audi A2 Audi Cabriolet Audi RS3 Audi RS4 Audi RS6
Motorsport	Cars Rally cars: Quattro A1 & A2 Sport Quattro Sport Quattro S1 Sport Quattro RS 002 LMP road race cars: R8R R8C R8 R10 TDI R15 TDI R18 LMS/GT road race cars:R8 LMS (R16) DTM race cars: Abt–Audi TT-R DTM A4 DTM A5/RS5 DTM Formula cars (engine suppliers): FPA FIA F2 Sport ABT (Formula E) Rallycross cars:S1 EKS RX quattro Series Audi R8 LMS Cup Audi Sport TT Cup
Concept cars	A2 (2011) Avus quattro e-tron Rosemeyer Steppenwolf Avantissimo Pikes Peak quattro Nuvolari quattro Le Mans quattro RSQ RS7 Concept Shooting Brake Roadjet A3 TDI clubsport quattro Sportback concept R8 TDi Le Mans e-tron (Frankfurt) e-tron (Detroit) e-tron Spyder Q8 concept quattro Concept quattro e-tron TT Offroad Prologue Nanuk Urban Concept e-tron Sportback Concept Elaine Aicon e-tron Vision Gran Turismo
See also	August Horch (founder) Audi Channel Audi Cup Audi Driving Experience Audi S and RS models Audi Sport Factory Race Cars Audi vehicles hybrid MLP MMI multitronic North American Volkswagen engines procon-ten quattro (four-wheel-drive system) S tronic Volkswagen Group diesel engines discontinued Volkswagen Group petrol engines discontinued Volkswagen Group factories Volkswagen Group platforms Vorsprung durch Technik World-Wide Volkswagen Corp. v. Woodson
Category

Audi, a marque of the Volkswagen Group, car timeline, European market, 1965–present
Type	1960s					1970s										1980s										1990s										2000s										2010s
	5	6	7	8	9	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8
Supermini										50 (86)																										A2 (8Z)										A1 (8X)
Small family car																																	A3 (8L)							A3 (8P)								A3 (8V)
																																			S3 (8L)							S3 (8P)							S3 (8V)
Compact executive car	F103 series								80 (82)						80 / 90 (81)								80 / 90 (89)					80 (8C)			A4 (8D)						A4 (8E)							A4 (8K)							A4 (8W)
																											S2							S4 (8D)					S4 (8E)						S4 (8K)							S4 (8W)
Mid-sizeluxury car				100 (F104/43/44/4A) / 200 (44)																										A6 (4A)				A6 (4B)							A6 (4F)						A6 (4G)							A6
																											S4 (4A)				S6 (4A)				S6 (4B)							S6 (4F)						S6 (4G)
Full-sizeluxury car																								V8 (4C)						A8 (4D)									A8 (4E)							A8 (4H)								A8 (4N)
																																	S8 (4D)										S8 (4E)					S8 (4H)
Sports car																																		TT (8N)								TT (8J)								TT (8S)
Coupé					100 Coupé S												Coupé (81)								Coupé (89)																		A5 (8T)									A5 (8F)
																																											S5 (8T)										S5 (8F)
Full-sizeluxuryfastback																																														A7 (4G)								A7 (4K)
																																																S7 (4G)
RS																																															RS3 Sportback (8P)				RS3 Sportback (8V)
																														RS2 Avant						RS4 (8D)						RS4 (8E/8H)						RS4 (8K)				RS4 (8W)		RS4 (B9)
																																						RS6 (4B)						RS6 (4F)				RS6 (4G)
																																													TT RS (8J)							TT RS (8S)
																Quattro (Ur-Quattro)																														RS5 (8T)							RS5 (8F)
																																																	RS7 (4G)
																																																	RS Q3 (8U)
Supercar																																											R8 (42)									R8 (4S)
Crossover utility vehicle																																													A4 allroad quattro (8K)
																																			allroad quattro (4Z)							A6 allroad quattro (4F)						A6 allroad quattro (4G)
Mini SUV																																																				Q2 (GA)
Compact SUV																																															Q3 (8U)
Mid-size SUV																																												Q5 (8R)									Q5 (80A)
Full-size SUV																																									Q7 (4L)										Q7 (4M)
Homologationroad / rally car																Quattro A1 & A2				Sport Quattro	Sport Quattro S1
August Horch (founder) Audi corporate website A marque of the Volkswagen Group quattro GmbH Audi S and RS models Audi Centre of Excellence Audi Channel Audi Driving Experience

Audi, a marque of the Volkswagen Group, car timeline, North American market, 1980–present
Type	1980s										1990s										2000s										2010s
	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9
Compact car																											A3 (8P)									A3 / S3 (8V)
	4000 (81)								80 / 90 (89)					90 (8C)			A4 (8D/8E/8H/8K)																					A4 (8W)
						4000 CS quattro															S4 (8D/8E/8H/8K)																		S4 (8W)
Mid-size car	5000 (43)				5000 (44)					100 / 200 (44)			100 (4A)			A6 (4A)			A6 (4B)							A6 (4F)							A6 (4G)							A6
													Ur-S4			Ur-S6							S6 (4B)					S6 (4F)						S6 (4G)
																																	A7 (4G)							A7
																																		S7 (4G)
Full-size car										V8 (4C)								A8 / S8 (4D)							A8 / S8 (4E)							A8 / S8 (4H)								A8
Coupé		Coupé (81)									Coupe Quattro (89)																		A5 / S5 (8T)										A5 / S5
																					TT Coupé (8N)								TT Coupé (8J)								TT Coupé (8S)
Roadster																						TT Roadster (8N)							TT Roadster (8J)								TT Roadster (8S)
Convertible															Cabriolet (8G)							A4 Cabriolet / S4 Cabriolet(8H)									A5 / S5 (8F)								A5 / S5
Sports car			Quattro (Ur-Quattro)																				RS6 (4B)				RS4 (8E/8H)
																													R8 (42)									R8
Crossover																				allroad quattro (4Z)														allroad (8K)				A4 allroad (8W)
Compact SUV																																				Q3 (8U)
																														Q5 (8R)									Q5 (FY)
Mid-size SUV																												Q7 (4L)										Q7 (4M)
																																								Q8
August Horch (founder) Audi corporate website A marque of the Volkswagen Group quattro GmbH Audi S and RS models Volkswagen Group of America, Inc. Volkswagen Group of America corporate website Electronics Research Laboratory North American Volkswagen engines Audi Driving Experience

Automotive industry in Germany
Automotive industry Economy of Germany Transport in Germany
Companies	Active vehicle producers BMW BMW i BMW Motorrad Borgward Group Daimler Mercedes-Benz Setra/EvoBus Smart Maybach Apollo Automobil Krauss-Maffei Rheinmetall RMMV Volkswagen Group Audi MAN RMMV Porsche Volkswagen Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles Foreign owned Ford of Europe Ford-Werke Iveco Magirus Opel Hyundai Europe Defunct vehicle producers Auto Union Borgward Brütsch DKW Horch NSU Wanderer Trabant Hansa Goliath North German Automobile and Engine Artega Automobile Fuldamobil Goggomobil Components ATR Behr Bosch ETAS Group BBS Bühler Motor Continental Dräxlmaier Group Dürr AG Getrag Hella Hermann Peters KSPG Löwe Automobil Mahle Mann+Hummel Petri Schaeffler Voith ZF Friedrichshafen ZF Sachs Motorsport and tuners Abt Sportsline AC Schnitzer Alpina Audi Sport AMG Bitter Brabus BMW M Carlsson G-Power GeigerCars Gemballa Hamann Motorsport Hartge Je Design Koenig Specials Mansory Opel Performance Center PPI Automotive Design Rieger Tuning Ruf Automobile Steinmetz Opel Tuning Services Daimler Financial Services Mercedes-Benz Bank Sixt
Related topics	ADAC AMI Leipzig ASAM DTM Frankfurt Motor Show German Association of the Automotive Industry Nürburgring
Defunct companies and marques above are shown in italics

Authority control	GND: 277575-X ISNI: 0000 0001 0229 7838

A Breakdown of Every Formula One Constructor in 2018

A Breakdown of Every Formula One Constructor in 2018

While the world of F1 seems to get further away from the idea of ‘motorcar racing’ with each passing year, there is still a huge amount to draw in enthusiasts to the sport. It tends to be streaky in terms of modern competition, with constructors dominating for a period of a few years, then falling away to reassess, redesign and reconstruct.

Below is a quick guide to the constructors competing in the 2018 F1 season, which gets underway on 25^th March with the Melbourne Grand Prix:

Mercedes:

The dominant force in F1 at the moment, Mercedes has won the last four F1 Constructors’ Championships. Aside from the power and speed offered by the car, its reliability is often cited as the key to the team’s success. Indeed, top driver for Mercedes Lewis Hamilton did not fail to finish a race last season – the only driver in F1 to do so. They are priced at 1/2 to win the Championship – it looks close to certain.

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Red Bull:

In terms of marketing and branding, you can see why F1 is confusing when you look at Red Bull. They compete as Aston Martin Red Bull Racing and use Renault power units, although they have been branded as Tag Heuer. That aside, they are second-favourites for the Championship at 10/3. A good chance if they can cut out the reliability issues that cost them last year.

Ferrari:

The most legendary name in F1, many fans are holding their breath to see if Ferrari can push their way back to the very top. They have had issues though: It is ten years since they won the Championship and there has even been hints that they might leave the sport altogether after disagreements with F1’s top brass. 7/2 to win the Championship looks okay for a team that looks like they are making progress.

McLaren:

Another iconic name, but McLaren have struggled in recent years and not won the Constructors’ Championship in two decades. There has been a lot of buzz about this year’s car though, with many thinking the Renault-powered car will make a breakthrough. Odds of 33/1 looks like serious value for an each-way bet, so get a free bet no deposit to bet on F1 for this race.

Renault:

Renault use the same power unit – Renault R.E.18 – as McLaren but still look a long way behind in every other department. It would be seen as an achievement if they could get a couple of podium finishes for their drivers this season. 250/1 to win the Championship.

Force India-Mercedes:

Beneficiaries of the reliability of Mercedes, Force India have been making slow and steady progress over the years. Equalled their best ever finish of 4^th in the Constructors’ Championship last season. They can be found at odds of 500/1 to win it this year.

Williams:

The glory days of Mansell, Hill and Piquet seem a long time away now. The huge amount of money required to compete in the sport means that Williams have fallen by the wayside somewhat. They also use the Mercedes power unit, but even a top five finish in a Grand Prix would be seen as an achievement. 500/1.

Others:

Torro Rosso, Sauber and Haas will make up the final three teams in F1 this season. They are a fair bit behind the rest when it comes to getting their drivers through a Grand Prix, even before it comes to finishing in the points positions. You can get over 1000/1 odds for any of them to win the F1 Constructors’ Championship.

MERCEDES BENZ + DAIMLER AG

Mercedes Benz 1926 – present, Stuttgart Germany, Benz & Cie. (1883-1926)
Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft(1890-1926) und DAIMLER AG

Automobiles, Trucks, Buses, Internal combustion engines, Luxury vehicles

Mercedes-Benz

Type	Division
Industry	Automotive industry
Predecessor	Benz & Cie. (1883-1926) Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft(1890-1926)
Founded	1926
Founder	Karl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler
Headquarters	Stuttgart, Germany
Number of locations	Jakarta Medan Kuala Lumpur Singapore Bandar Seri Begawan Shanghai Hong Kong Macau Taipei
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Dieter Zetsche, Chairman
Products	Automobiles Trucks Buses Internal combustion engines Luxury vehicles
Services	Financial services automobile repair
Owner	Daimler AG
Divisions	Mercedes-AMG Mercedes-MaybachMercedes-brabus
Slogan	The Best or Nothing
Website	www.mercedes-benz.com/en/

Mercedes-Benz (German pronunciation:[mɛɐ̯ˈtseːdəs ˈbɛnts]) is a German automobile manufacturer, a multinational division of the German manufacturer Daimler AG.

Daimler AG

This article is about the German automobile manufacturer. For the British automobile manufacturer, see Daimler Company.

Daimler AG

Daimler AG Headquarters
Type	Aktiengesellschaft
Traded as	FWB: DAI
Industry	Automotive
Predecessor	Daimler-Benz (1926-1998) DaimlerChrysler (1998-2007)
Founded	1998; 18 years ago (as DaimlerChrysler)
Headquarters	Stuttgart, Germany
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Dieter Zetsche(CEO and Chairman of the Board of Directors) Manfred Bischoff (Chairman of the supervisory board)
Products	Automobiles, commercial vehicles
Revenue	€129.872 billion (2014)
Total equity	€44.584 billion (2014)
Owner	Institutional shareholders(74.8%) Private shareholders (15.3%) Kuwait Investment Authority(6.8%) Renault–Nissan Alliance(3.1%)
Number of employees	279,972 (2014)
Divisions	Mercedes-Benz Smart
Subsidiaries	List[show]
Website	www.daimler.com

 Daimler AG (help·info) (German pronunciation:[ˈdaɪmlɐ aːˈɡeː]) is a German multinational automotive corporation. Daimler AG is headquartered in Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. As of 2014, Daimler owns or has shares in a number of car, bus, truck and motorcycle brands including Mercedes-Benz, Mercedes-AMG, Smart Automobile, Freightliner, Western Star, Thomas Built Buses, Setra, BharatBenz, Mitsubishi Fuso, MV Agusta as well as shares in Denza, KAMAZ, Beijing Automotive Group, and Renault-Nissan Alliance. The Maybach brand was closed at the end of 2012, but was revived in November 2014 as “Mercedes-Maybach”, an ultra luxury edition of the Mercedes-Benz S-Class. In 2014 Daimler sold 2.5 million vehicles. By unit sales, Daimler is the thirteenth-largest car manufacturer and second-largest truck manufacturer in the world. In addition to automobiles, Daimler manufactures buses and provides financial services through its Daimler Financial Services arm. The company is a component of the Euro Stoxx 50stock market index.

History

Daimler AG is a German manufacturer of automobiles, motor vehicles, and engines, which dates back more than a century.

An Agreement of Mutual Interest was signed on 1 May 1924 between Benz & Cie (founded 1883 by Karl Benz) and Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft (founded 1890 by Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach).

Both companies continued to manufacture their separate automobile and internal combustion engine brands until, on 28 June 1926, when Benz & Cie. and Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft AG formally merged—becoming Daimler-BenzAG—and agreed that, thereafter, all of the factories would use the brand name of Mercedes-Benz on their automobiles.

In 1998, Daimler-Benz and Chrysler Corporation announced the world’s largest cross-border deal ever, valued at US$38billion, and the resulting change in company name to “DaimlerChrysler AG”.

In 2007, when the Chrysler group was sold off to Cerberus Capital Management (see below), the name of the parent company was changed to simply “Daimler AG”.

In November 2014, Daimler announced it would acquire 25 percent of Italian motorcycle producer MV Agusta for an undisclosed fee.

Timeline of Daimler AG

Benz & Company, 1883–1926
Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft AG, 1890–1926
Daimler-Benz AG, 1926–1998
DaimlerChrysler AG, 1998–2007
Daimler AG, 2007–present

Merger with Chrysler

The former logo of Daimler Chrysler AG.

In a so-called “Merger of Equals,” or “Marriage made in Heaven”, according to its then CEO and architect Jürgen E. Schrempp, Daimler-Benz AG and United States-based automobile manufacturer Chrysler Corporation, the smallest of the three American automakers, merged in 1998 in an exchange of shares as Daimler-Benz AG bought 92% of Chrysler, and 8% of Chrysler remained independent and formed DaimlerChrysler AG. The terms of the merger allowed Daimler-Benz‘s non-automotive businesses such as Daimler-Benz InterServices AG, “debis AG” for short, (created in 1989 to handle data processing, financial and insurance services, and real estate management for the Daimler group) to continue to pursue their respective strategies of expansion. debis AG reported revenues of $8.6 bn (DM 15.5 bn) in 1997.

The merger was contentious with investors launching lawsuits over whether the transaction was the ‘merger of equals’ that senior management claimed or actually amounted to a Daimler-Benz takeover of Chrysler. A class action investor lawsuit was settled in August 2003 for US$300 million while a suit by billionaire investor activist Kirk Kerkorian was dismissed on 7 April 2005. The transaction claimed the job of its architect, Chairman Jürgen E. Schrempp, who resigned at the end of 2005 in response to the fall of the company’s share price following the transaction. The merger was also the subject of a book Taken for a Ride: How Daimler-Benz Drove Off With Chrysler, (2000) by Bill Vlasic and Bradley A. Stertz.

Another issue of contention is whether the merger delivered promised synergies and successfully integrated the two businesses. Martin H. Wiggers‘ concept of a platform strategy like the VW Group, was implemented only for a few models, so the synergy effects in development and production were too low. As late as 2002, DaimlerChrysler appeared to run two independent product lines. Later that year, the company launched products that appeared to integrate elements from both sides of the company, including the

2006 Chrysler Crossfire (ZH MY05) coupe.jpg

Chrysler Crossfire, which was based on the Mercedes SLK platform and utilized Mercedes’s 3.2L V6, and the Dodge Sprinter/Freightliner Sprinter, a re-badged Mercedes-Benz Sprinter van.

Sale of Chrysler

Daimler agreed to sell the Chrysler unit to Cerberus Capital Management in May 2007 for US$6 billion. Through most of its history, Chrysler has been the smallest of the “Big 3” U.S. automakers, but in January 2007, DaimlerChrysler, excluding its luxury Mercedes and Maybach lines, also outsold traditionally second place Ford, though behind General Motors and Toyota.

Chrysler reported losses of US$1.5 billion in 2006. It then announced plans to lay off 13,000 employees in mid-February 2007, close a major assembly plant and reduce production at other plants in order to restore profitability by 2008.

DaimlerChrysler had reportedly approached other carmakers and investment groups to sell Chrysler in early 2007. General Motors was reported to be a suitor, but on 3 August 2007, DaimlerChrysler completed the sale of Chrysler Group to Cerberus Capital Management. The original agreement stated that Cerberus would take an 80.1 percent stake in the new company, Chrysler Holding LLC. DaimlerChrysler changed its name to Daimler AG and retained the remaining 19.9% stake in the separated Chrysler.

The terms saw Daimler pay Cerberus US$650 million to take Chrysler and associated liabilities off its hands. Of the US$7.4 billion purchase price, Cerberus Capital Management will invest US$5 billion in Chrysler Holdings and US$1.05 billion in Chrysler’s financial unit. The de-merged Daimler AG received US$1.35 billion directly from Cerberus but directly invested US$2 billion in Chrysler itself.

2011 Jeep Grand Cherokee Laredo NHTSA 2

Since Chrysler’s 2009 bankruptcy filing in the United States, Chrysler has been controlled by Italian automaker Fiat and plans to integrate Chrysler’s products into the Fiat portfolio, such as Lancia and Chrysler’s namesake brand, and Fiat’s namesake brand with Dodge. Despite the fact it had been nearly seven years after the Daimler/Chrysler split, the fourth-generation Jeep Grand Cherokee shares a platform with the Mercedes-Benz M-Class. This also includes the Chrysler LX platform vehicles which initially used Mercedes-Benz components since its 2005 introduction.

Automated cars

On 3 August 2015, Nokia announced that it had reached a deal to sell its Here digital maps division to a consortium of three German automakers—BMW, Daimler AG, and Volkswagen Group, for €2.8 billion. This was seen as an indication that the automakers were interested in automated cars.

Corporate affairs

Management

Dieter Zetsche has been the Chairman of Daimler and Head of Mercedes-Benz Cars since 1 January 2006 as well as member of the Board of Management since 1998. He was former President and CEO of the Chrysler, LLC (previously owned by Daimler AG), he may be best known in the United States as “Dr. Z” from a Chrysler advertising campaign called “Ask Dr. Z”.

Current (2015) members of the Board of Management of Daimler AG are:

• Dr. Dieter Zetsche: Chairman of the Board as well as Head of Mercedes-Benz Cars.
• Dr. Wolfgang Bernhard: Head of Daimler Trucks.
• Renata Jungo Brüngger: Integrity and Legal Affairs.
• Ola Källenius: Head of Mercedes-Benz Cars Marketing and Sales.
• Wilfried Porth: Head of Human Resources and Labor Relations.
• Hubertus Troska: Greater China.
• Bodo Uebber: Head of Finance and Controlling as well as Financial Services.
• Dr. Thomas Weber: Head of Group Research and Mercedes-Benz Cars Development.

The Board of Management total members of seven, after the unexpected resignation on 28 January 2014 of Andreas Renschler, former head of Manufacturing and Procurement Mercedes-Benz Cars & Mercedes-Benz Vans, has been brought back to eight after the nomination on 1 January 2015 of Swedish-born Ola Källenius to the Board of Management as Head of Mercedes-Benz Cars Marketing and Sales.

As of May 2015, the twenty members of Daimler AG’s Supervisory Board are: Manfred Bischoff (Chairman), Michael Brecht (Deputy Chairman), Paul Achleitner, Sari Baldauf, Michael Bettag, Bernd Bohr, Clemens Börsig, Jürgen Hambrecht, Petraea Heynike, Andrea Jung, Joe Kaeser, Ergun Lümali, Sabine Maaßen, Wolfgang Nieke, Bernd Pischetsrieder, Valter Sanches, Jörg Spies, Elke Tönjes-Werner, Frank Weber, Roman Zitzelsberger.

Shareholder Structure

by Ownership

• Institutional investors: 73.7%
• Private investors: 16.4
• Kuwait Investment Authority (Kuwait): 6.8%
• Renault (France): 1.54%
• Nissan (Japan): 1.54%

by Regio 29.7% Europe (excluding Germany), 32.1% German, 25.5% United States, 6.8% Kuwait, 5.4% Asia, 0.5% Others.

EADS shareholding

As of March 2010, Daimler owned a 22.5% share of EADS, of which the public sector held 40%.

In April 2013, Daimler sold its shares in EADS, and the same year, EADS restructured itself into a new aerospace company named Airbus, into which Daimler AG has no shareholding.

On the side of the public sector, the KfW banking group holds 13%, HGV Hamburger Gesellschaft fur Vermogens- und Beteiligungsverwaltung (State of Hamburg) holds 10%, Hannoversche Beteiligungsgesellschaft (State of Lower Saxony) holds 5%,Bayerische Landesbodenkreditanstalt, Anstalt der Bayerischen Landesbank holds 3.5%, LfA Forderbank Bayern holds 1.5%, Landesbank Baden-Württemberg and Landeskreditbank Baden-Württemberg – Forderbank (L-Bank) each holds 2.5%, and Bremer Investitions-Gesellschaft (State of Bremen) holds 2%.

Leadership

Daimler-Benz AG (1926–1998)

• Wilhelm Kissel (1926–1942)
• Wilhelm Haspel (1942–1952)
• Heinrich C. Wagner (1952)
• Fritz Koenecke (1952–1960)
• Walter Hitzinger (1961–1966)
• Joachim Zahn (1966–1979)
• Gerhard Prinz (1980–1983)
• Werner Breitschwerdt (1983–1987)
• Edzard Reuter (1987–1995)
• Jürgen E. Schrempp (1995–1998)

DaimlerChrysler AG (1998–2007)

• Jürgen E. Schrempp (1998–2006)
  • Robert James Eaton (co-CEO, 1998–2000)
• Dieter Zetsche (2006–2007)

Daimler AG (2007–present)

• Dieter Zetsche (2007–present)
• Annette Winkler (2010–present) CEO, Smart Automobile

North Charleston Expansion

On 5 March 2015, Daimler AG announced a 1,200 jobs package to the North Charleston region for its van plant. This will allow the company to start manufacturing Mercedes-Benz Sprinter vans from scratch in a North Charleston plant to meet demand in North America. Currently, these vans are set up in Germany, then shipped to the United States partially disassembled for reassembly. This is all to avoid import tariffs, a practice that started in 2010. A Daimler official said that the Sprinter’s popularity in North America is making that process less efficient. The North Charleston plant had been employing only 100 workers. The Sprinter is available on the U.S. market as a panel van, crew bus and chassis in several variants with three lengths and roof heights, six-cylinder diesel or gasoline engines. The Sprinter has been assembled and sold in the United States since 2001.

Brands

The largest Daimler plant (producing Mercedes-Benz cars) in Sindelfingen, Germany.

Daimler sells automobiles under the following brands worldwide:

• Mercedes-Benz Cars
  • Maybach – production ended in 2012
  • Mercedes-Benz
  • Mercedes-AMG
  • Smart

  • Smart (automobile)

     

    small cars Clever Car

    Smart

    open your mind.
    Type	Division
    Industry	Automotive
    Founded	1994
    Headquarters	Böblingen, Germany
    Key people	Annette Winkler CEO, 2010–present
    Products	Microcars
    Owner	Daimler AG
    Website	www.smart.com

    Smart Fortwo

    Smart Fortwo cabriolet

    1993 eco-sprinter and eco-speedster concepts

    A Stack of Smart vehicles in Canberra

    Smart Crossblade

    A Smart Fortwo mhd cabrio (left) and a Smart Fortwo mhd coupe (right)                      2003 Smart V6 Biturbo

     

    Smart Automobile is a division of Daimler AG that manufactures and markets the Smart Fortwo and Smart Forfour. The official trademarked name is stylized as “smart“, with all lowercase letters. Headquartered in Böblingen, Germany, Smart has marketed a range of microcar and subcompact vehicles, with its primary assembly plants located in Hambach, France and Novo Mesto, Slovenia. Annette Winkler has served as Smart’s CEO since 2010.

    Marketed in 46 countries—in Asia, North and South America, Africa, Australia and Europe—production of the Fortwo had surpassed 1.7 million units by early 2015.

    

    The design concept for the company’s automobiles began at Mercedes in the early 1970s and in the late 1980s, associated with Swatch. After a brief period of backing by Volkswagen, the first model was launched by Daimler-Benz in October 1998. Several variants on the original design have been introduced, with the original two-seater called the Fortwo, now in its third generation and available as an electric version.

    The brand name Smart derives from its early cooperative studies with Swatch and Mercedes: Swatch Mercedes ART. In its corporate branding, the company uses a lowercase logotype (i.e., smart) and a logo incorporating the letter “c” for “compact” and an arrow for “forward thinking”.

    Origins

    In late 1982, SMH (makers of the Swatch brand of watches) CEO Nicolas Hayek began developing an idea for a new car using the same type of manufacturing strategies and personalization features used to popularize Swatch watches. He believed that the automotive industry had ignored a sector of potential customers who wanted a small and stylish city car. This idea soon became known as the “Swatchmobile”. Hayek’s private company Hayek Engineering AG began designing the new car for SMH, with seating for two and a hybrid drivetrain.

    While design of the car was proceeding, Hayek feared existing manufacturers would feel threatened by the Swatchmobile. Thus, rather than directly competing, he preferred to cooperate with another company in the automotive industry. This would also relieve SMH of the cost burden in setting up a distribution network. Hayek approached several automotive manufacturers and on July 3, 1991, he reached an agreement with Volkswagen to share development of the new project.

    By 1993, Ferdinand Piëch had become CEO of Volkswagen and he immediately sought to terminate the project with SMH. Volkswagen had already been working on their own “three-litre car”: a car which would consume three litres of fuel per 100 km of driving (the eventual Volkswagen Lupo 3L). Volkswagen’s own concept was believed to be a better business proposition, featuring four seats and more cargo room.

    Hayek had suspected that Piëch would seek to end the agreement with SMH upon his ascendancy to the CEO position; therefore, he discreetly began approaching other car companies with the Swatchmobile project. Rebuffed by BMW, Fiat, General Motors and Renault, he finally reached an informal agreement with Daimler-Benz AG, maker of Mercedes-Benz cars.

    A deal was announced on March 4, 1994, at a press conference at Mercedes-Benz headquarters in Stuttgart that the companies would join forces in founding Micro Compact Car AG (MCC). 49% of the initial capital of 50 million Swiss francs were provided by SMH and the remaining 51% by Daimler-Benz. The company consisted of two subsidiaries: MCC GmbH based in Renningen (a suburb of Stuttgart) which would design the car, and the then-unnamed manufacturing plant. SMH Auto SA, owned by Hayek, would design a hybrid electric drive system for the car, while Hayek Engineering would audit the design and manufacturing.

    The press conference also featured the debut of two concept cars: the eco-sprinter and eco-speedster, styled by Mercedes-Benz’s design studio in California. The cars were similar to the eventual Smart City-Coupé. No mention was made of the fact that SMH had no input in the design of these concepts, and they were badged as Mercedes-Benzes.

    By the end of April 1994, MCC had set up a head office in Biel, Switzerland.

    Company history

    Three co-directors were immediately named to head the new company: designer and engineer Johann Tomforde and financial administrator Christoph Baubin from Daimler-Benz, and marketing manager Hans Jürg Schär, who spearheaded the original Swatch marketing campaigns in the mid-1980s. Tomforde had been working on the Mercedes City Car (coincidentally abbreviated MCC) project at Daimler-Benz since 1990, which produced theeco-sprinter and eco-speedster concepts as well as the Vision-A concept, which eventually became the Mercedes-Benz A-Class.

    One of the first controversies at MCC was the name of the car itself. Nicolas Hayek insisted it retain Swatch in some way: “Swatchmobile”, or “Swatch Car”. Daimler-Benz refused, and pushed for a neutral name. The final selection was Smart, an acronym that had been previously used internally by MCC for Swatch Mercedes Art.

    By May 1994, the co-directors had identified 74 potential sites for the assembly plant. The final site was announced on December 20, 1994: Hambach, France. The purpose-built factory quickly gained the nickname “Smartville“.

    In 1995, Tomforde devised a modular system of assembly for the car, insisting suppliers design and assemble, and even install their own modules onto the final car, at the new plant using their own employees thus reducing the cost overhead for the parent companies and divesting MCC of the financial and legal liabilities for those parts. It also provided a fiscal framework whereby MCC could share the development costs with the suppliers, rather than having to fund the entire project themselves. MCC secured contracts with suppliers to design and supply almost all parts of the car: seats by Faurecia, interiors by VDO, chassis and door modules by Magna, door panels by Dynamit Nobel, and suspension by Krupp.

    Despite offloading a substantial amount of the development on the suppliers MCC required more capital. Recapitalization by Daimler-Benz increased their share of ownership in the company to 81% by 1996, leaving SMH with only the remaining 19%.

    The assembly plant opened on October 27, 1997, with a ceremonial ribbon-cutting by then-French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. Introduction of the new Smart city-Coupé was planned for March, 1998, however dynamic instability of the prototypes prompted Daimler-Benz to announce postponing the launch until October, 1998. Johann Tomforde was replaced as chief engineer by Gerhard Fritz. Fritz lowered the centre of gravity, widened the track, stiffened the suspension, changed the steering, and added ballast weight to the front of the car in order to increase its stability in emergency avoidance manoeuvres (notably the Swedish “moose test“).

    The car launched successfully in nine European countries in October 1998, but the final design did not fulfill Hayek’s expectations. Hayek pushed for a hybrid drivetrain but the final product used a relatively conventional gasoline engine. Shortly afterward Daimler-Benz bought out SMH’s remaining stake in the company. MCC was now a wholly owned subsidiary of Daimler-Benz (which soon merged with Chrysler Corporation to become DaimlerChrysler). The office in Biel was shut down and operations were consolidated at the MCC GmbH design centre in Germany. On January 1, 1999, MCC GmbH changed its name to MCC Smart GmbH, and by 2000, it dropped the last vestiges of the association with SMH, becoming Smart GmbH.

    The model line was subsequently expanded to include the Roadster a rear-engine, rear-drive and four-door, four-seat supermini aptly named Forfour (the original City-Coupé was renamed Fortwo to fit the new naming scheme).

    The expansion did not increase profits at the company; Smart GmbH lost nearly 4 billion euros from 2003 to 2006. Plans were enacted to increase the company’s profitability and integrate its operations with Daimler (at the time DaimlerChrysler).

    In 2005, Daimler decided against purchasing a 50% share in the Dutch NedCar plant used to manufacture the ForFour, ending its production. A planned SUV called Formore was terminated as the assembly plant in Brazil was being fitted with machines, and production of the Roadster was discontinued. In 2006, after dwindling sales and heavy financial losses, Smart GmbH was liquidated and its operations were absorbed by DaimlerChrysler directly.

    Smart now operates under the Mercedes-Benz Cars division of Daimler AG, offering solely the Fortwo Coupe and Cabrio models.

    Models

    Apart from the original Smart Fortwo, a sporty Smart Roadster, a limited production of 2000 erstwhile concept Smart Crossblade and a supermini Smart Forfour were also offered. These have now been discontinued. There were also plans to introduce the French made cross-over based on the body of the ForFour and the AWD hardware of the Mercedes C-class with the name of Formore but industrialization of this was cancelled at the 11th hour (even as tooling was being installed in the assembly plant) due to unfavourable exchange rate swings and spending cutbacks driven by losses elsewhere within Smart.

    Production models

    1998–2000 Smart City-Coupé & City-Cabrio* (*from 2000)2002 Smart Crossblade2001-2007 Smart City-C0upé & City Cabrio ( renamed Fortwo in 2004)2001-2004 Smart K (Japan only)2003-2005 Smart Roadster2004-2006 +2014-present Smart Forfour2007-present Smart Fortwo2008–present (in limited trials) Smart Fortwo ED (formerly known as EV)

    Tridion 4 (2001)Concept and unproduced models

    

    

    2005 smart crosstown-hybrid

    • Forvision (2011)
    • Forstars (2012)
    • Formore (never shown)

    Electric versions

    Smart Electric Vehicle

    Two Smart Electric Vehicle cars deployed in the Car2Go carsharing program charging at the Herengracht in Amsterdam

    Main article: Smart electric drive

    An all-electric version of the Fortwo, the Smart Fortwo Electric Vehicle (previously known as Smart ED), began development in 2006. Field testing began in London with 100 units in 2007, and the second generation, with a total of 2,000 units produced, was introduced in 2009 and available in 18 markets around the world for leasing or through the Car2Go carsharing service in San Diego and Amsterdam. Production of the second-generation Smart Fortwo electric drive began in November 2009, in Hambach, France. The Smart EDs have a lithium-ion battery provided by Tesla Motors with capacity of 14 kilowatt-hours (50 MJ). The range of a fully charged battery is up to 135 kilometres (84 miles) under the New European Driving Cycle (NEDC). The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency‘s official all-electric range is 63 miles (101 km) and rated the Smart ED with a combined fuel economy of 87 miles per gallon gasoline equivalent (mpg-e) (2.7 L gasoline equivalent/100 km; 104 mpg-imp gasoline equivalent).

    The third-generation Smart electric drive is scheduled to be launched in the U.S. and Europe by the second quarter of 2013 and Daimler AG plans to mass-produce the electric car with availability in 30 markets worldwide. The third-generation Smart electric drive was unveiled at the September 2011 Frankfurt Motor Show. Key differences with the second-generation model include a more powerful electric motor, which improves acceleration and top speed, a new lithium-ion battery pack that will allow to increase the range to 140 kilometres (87 mi), and an option for quick-charge will be available.

    Electric vehicle conversions

    Main article: Electric vehicle conversion

    Smart electric drive is a Smart Fortwo electric conversion. It has a 40 km range with AGM batteries (100 km with Li-ion batteries)

    Marketing

    Asia

    Japan

    First generation Smart models equipped with engine sizes smaller than 660 cubic centimetres (40 cu in) fit into the Kei car category of cars in Japan, and are eligible for a range of lower taxes. Recent models with a larger engine do not meet the Kei qualifications. Because of high taxation on older cars in Japan, many older used Smart cars are exported to other countries with right-hand drive, like Great Britain and South Africa. An official version of the Smart Fortwo called the ‘Smart K’ has been released to fit the Kei car category. English musician Steve Appleton is featured in a Smart TV commercial, running in Japan during 2010.

    China

    Smart was shown in April 2008, at the Beijing Auto Show. Smart Fortwo started the pre-sales in October 2008 and the Smart vending machine road show in 12 cities from October 2008 to February 2009.

    Hong Kong

    Smart is available in Hong Kong with authorized dealer, Zung Fu Motors.

    Indonesia

    Since 29 November 2010, the Smart fortwo has been available in Indonesia with PT. Mercedes-Benz Indonesia (MBI) as the authorized dealer. MBI originally offered three models: Pure Coupe, Passion Coupe, and Passion Cabriolet, for sale in Jakarta and Bali. Indonesia is also the first country in Southeast Asia to have the Smart Electric Drive, which has been lent to the Government of DKI Jakarta for a one-year period and can be extended for further indefinite period by a signed agreement between PT. Mercedes-Benz Indonesia, PT. Siemens Indonesia, and the Government of DKI Jakarta. The Smart ED will then serve as a pilot project to prove the effectivity of zero-emission car usage that can utilize alternative sources of energy.

    North America

    Canada

    The Smart Fortwo was introduced in Canada in late 2004 and was sold through Mercedes-Benz dealers. Demand was initially heavy with up to 6-month waiting lists in major urban areas in the spring of 2005. The vehicle was especially popular for commuters, small car enthusiasts, people needing light delivery and service vehicles. Demand relaxed slightly in the second year on the market. Sales rebounded with the second generation. Canadian Smart cdis cannot be registered in some states in the US.                        The Smart Fortwo USA

    10,239 Smart Fortwo cdis had been sold in Canada by the first month of 2008. Just before the Type 450 ended production (after which the production had equaled 770,256 cars) Mercedes-Benz Canada built up stock of cdis to tide dealers over until the successor model 451 arrived at the end of 2007.

    The Canadian version of the Type 450 Smart Fortwo cdi sold to 915 customers over three months in 2004, 4,080 were sold in 2005, and 3,023 in 2006. Virtually all the deliveries in 2004 and many of the deliveries in 2005 were to long-time Smart fans who had been waiting for their car for years, which largely accounts for the higher numbers. Through 2007, sales totaled about 2,200 units, with the last few cars being sold in the first month of 2008, when the new Type 451 was already on sale. The Smart’s strongest sales performance ever in Canada was in April 2007, when more than 500 units were sold. Sales are strongest (per capita) in Western Canada, with Vancouver Island and Vancouver being especially hot markets.

    The 2008-2011 (North America) Smart Fortwo Type 451 was totally redesigned, with a 70 HP naturally aspirated Mitsubishi-sourced gasoline engine of 999 cc for North America, up from the 799 cc cdi diesel, with the attendant loss of fuel economy. Smart decided not to import the cdi version of the 451, now with 55 DIN HP, although this decision has led to criticism that the new Smart does not get the fuel economy that many would expect from such a small car. The 799 cc, far more fuel efficient diesel is sold in Europe and some other markets.

    The BRABUS Tailor-Made program is not well advertised in Canada, but at least 16 Tailor-Made cars have been produced to Canadian specification. These vehicles are sent to the BRABUS factory in Bottrop, Germany, where the standard ex-works cars are stripped to the shell and repainted/retrimmed to suit individual customers’ tastes. The first four are the BRABUS Canada 1; three in bright red (including the tridion, two cabriolets and one coupé) and one in all white (a cabriolet). Aside from the special paint, all had every BRABUS part fitted to the body and interior, and the seats, door panels and dashboards were trimmed in black Nappa leather and Alcantara. Three of these cars are in British Columbia and #1-of-1, the Concept vehicle used at Canadian International Auto Shows (a red cabrio with silver alloys), is now in London, Ontario. The next BRABUS Tailor-Made Canadian car was a one-off all orange 451 made for a customer in Vancouver. The other ten were all ordered by Mercedes-Benz Canada as the special “edit10n” of the Canadian BRABUS 451 (with only 70 HP), painted in metallic dark grey with an orange Nappe leather interior. There is also at least one BoConcept 451 built to Canadian standards.

    In 2009, the Government of Canada acquired the European Smart mhd (micro hybrid drive) through partnership with Mercedes-Benz Canada. The project was administered by the ecoTECHNOLOGY for Vehicles(eTV) program within Transport Canada. Goals were to identify the benefits of the start-stop system equipped on the vehicle and how to accelerate the penetration of this technology throughout Canada. See Smart mhd Test Results Report.

    United States

    Smart Fortwo (2nd generation)parked in downtown Washington, D.C.

     

    Before 2008, Smart cars were only available in the United States as “grey market” imports, such as ZAP. U.S. federal regulations allow certain grey market importing in large quantities provided the vehicles are modified and tested to conform to U.S. safety and emissions regulations. Smarts imported into the United States by “The Defiance Company LLC”, modified by G&K Automotive Conversion in Santa Ana, California, and distributed and sold by independent dealerships which were not affiliated with Mercedes. U.S. regulations did not permit the purchase and import of used Smart CDi vehicles from Canada, as the diesel powered Canadian Smarts did not meet American emissions regulations.

    In June 2006, DaimlerChrysler confirmed that Smart would be officially launched in the United States in the first quarter of 2008. The cars were offered through a dealership holding company Penske Automotive Group, which created a new U.S. dealership network for the brand under the name Smart USA. Initially, an updated gasoline powered Fortwo was offered, starting around US$12,000. The new model made its debut at European auto shows in November 2006.

    Hybrid Technologies plans to sell an electric version of the Smart Fortwo model in the U.S. starting at US$35,000. It is being called a hybrid car even though the vehicle is all-electric. The electric Smart will have a range of 120 to 150 miles (190–240 km), a top speed of 80 mph (130 km/h), and charge in 5 to 6 hours using a standard 120 V AC outlet. An electric model is currently undergoing testing in the UK and will only be offered to commercial clients as a trial for the time being. The electric model is scheduled for a U.S. release for the 2012 model year with some test market cars surfacing in 4th quarter 2010.

    A Forbes article has been critical of the stated reasons that Daimler-Chrysler gave for introducing the car in the United States. The Smart fortwo may have claimed to be the most fuel-efficient fully gasoline-engined car for sale in the US, but it actually lags behind the 4-door Mitsubishi Mirage and 2-door Scion iQ (combined 40 mpg and 37 mpg, respectively). According to the EPA, the Smart’s fuel efficiency is lower than the fuel efficiency of some hybrids, including the Ford Fusion, the Toyota Prius, the Honda Civic Hybrid, and the 2-seat Honda Insight, which achieve 41/36, 51/48, 40/43, and 40/43 respectively while the Smart achieves 33 city and 41 highway. The Smart Fortwo is the most efficient car at its pricepoint, since it costs about half as much as a hybrid in the US.

    Car2Go carsharing Smart fortwo (2nd generation) in downtown Washington, D.C.

    The Fortwo has received much attention in the U.S. In its April 2008 issue, Men’s Vogue raised the question, “in a nation where your supersized car is your castle, is the Smart too mini for a man?”.

    To obtain a Smart Fortwo originally required obtaining a “reservation” costing $99 through a dealer or over the internet. The waiting time in January 2009 was approximately 12 months; by July 2009, there was no wait to obtain a vehicle and dealers had them in stock for immediate delivery.

    On January 25, 2010, Smart USA began its first lease program in the US market for Smart fortwo models. The program was scheduled to last through February 28, 2010, but has been extended indefinitely despite lack of leasing sales.

    Penske Automotive Group announced plans February 14, 2011, to relinquish distribution of the Smart Fortwo under Smart USA, to Mercedes-Benz USA. In 2011, Smart USA offered four versions of their Fortwo model. These models include the following: cabriolet, the high-cost convertible version; passion, the mid-cost moonroof version; pure, the low-cost basic version; and electric drive, the electric version.

    On July 1, 2011, Mercedes-Benz USA took over the distribution, sales and marketing of the Smart brand from Penske Automotive Group. Smart is owned and produced by Mercedes’ parent, Daimler AG.

    As of 2015 all models are petrol or electric.

    Mexico

    The Smart Fortwo was introduced in 2003, and were sold in department stores Sanborns and Liverpool. Later Mercedes-Benz dealers started to offer the car. Currently Smart cars are still offered in the country, with only the Fortwo model available.Smart offers the hardtop and convertible models of the Fortwo coupé in Mexico.

    Smart Fortwo has fierce competition with the Hyundai Atos, Pontiac Matiz, and Chevrolet Chevy, which are compacts with low gas consumption at less than half the cost of a Smart but with more space for passengers.

    South America

    Argentina

    In Argentina, the Fortwo has been for sale since 2010 and models (Fortwo Cabrio and Fortwo Coupé) can be bought in dealerships located in the Puerto Madero neighborhood of Buenos Aires.

    Brazil

    In Brazil, the Fortwo has been for sale since 2009 and models (fortwo cabrio turbo, fortwo coupé turbo and fortwo coupé MHD) can be bought in some Smart and/or Mercedes-Benz dealerships in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte and Porto Alegre cities. The electric, brabus and forfour versions are not available for the Brazilian market.

    Oceania

    Australia

    Since 2003, Smart models have been for sale in Australia. All models that have been produced have been sold in Australia. The Smart Fortwo is currently sold through Mercedes-Benz Dealerships. Mercedes-Benz dealerships around Australia as of 2003 were only offering the Fortwo in the “Pulse” mid-range trim, thus the “Passion”, “Brabus Xclusive” and other trims are not available as yet, until further notice or changes.

    In March 2015 it was announced that the Smart brand would be withdrawn from Australia due to poor sales.

    Europe

    United Kingdom

    Launched in the United Kingdom in 2000, the current range features the Smart Fortwo convertible, and Smart Fortwo Coupé. Smart is available in the UK through Mercedes Benz retailers.

    The UK is host to a number of annual events, both official and unofficial, including the Smart Festival, held annually at Mercedes-Benz World in Weybridge, near historic Brooklands – the world’s first purpose-built motor racing circuit.

    Russia

    The Smart brand debuted in the Russian market in 2012 with the Fortwo model only.

    Safety

    Cutaway showing structure of the Smart Fortwo

     

    The Smart Fortwo uses a very small front crumple zone. The second generation Smart Fortwo has been awarded 4 out of 5 stars in the Euro NCAP Adult Occupant Protection and 2 out of 4 stars in the Pedestrian protection test, but was not tested for Child Occupant Protection as it has no rear seats. The original Smart was awarded 3 out of 5 stars for Adult Occupant Protection. In American tests using a five star rating, Smart cars received a four star safety rating for the driver from a front impact, and a five star safety rating for the driver for a side impact. It also received “Good” ratings for front and side crash protection in Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) tests. However, in an April 2009 40 mph frontal offset crash test between a Fortwo and a Mercedes C-Class, “the Smart went air-borne and turned around 450 degrees” causing “extensive intrusion into the space around the dummy from head to feet”. The IIHS rated the Smart Fortwo “Poor,” noting that “Multiple injuries, including to the head, would be likely for a real-world driver of a Smart in a similar collision.”

    The main structure of the car is a stiff structure, marketed as the Tridion Safety Cell, designed to activate the crumple zones of a colliding vehicle. This design creates a safety cell around the passengers, according to the manufacturer.

    Modification

    Smart models have been modified by Brabus of Germany, resulting in Brabus production models, including Smart BRABUS electric drive.

    Other companies modify the Smart Fortwo to use motorcycle engines, such as the Suzuki Hayabusa 1340 cc inline four-cylinder. These cars are known as Smartuki. The most powerful models can accelerate from 0 to 60 mph (0 to 100 km/h) in less than 3.5 seconds. The original car was fitted with a mildly tuned engine and ran 0-60 mph in 4.5 seconds, 1/4 mile standing start in 12.4 seconds and a top speed of 132 mph (212 km/h). It is possible to push the GSXR engine further; nitrous oxide will add another 50 bhp (37 kW; 51 PS) – 80 bhp (60 kW; 81 PS) and there is a turbocharged option.

    

    Crosstown Hybrid (2005)2011 Smart forspeed concept Forspeed (2011)

  • • Car2Go
• Daimler Trucks
  • Commercial vehicles
  •  
    • Freightliner
    • Mercedes-Benz (truck group)
    • 
    • Mitsubishi Fuso
    • 
    • Thomas Built Buses
    • 
    • Sterling Trucks – operations wound down in 2010, but will continue to support authorized dealers and vehicle owners
    • 
    • Western Star
    • 
    • BharatBenz
  • Components
  • 
    • Alliance Truck Parts
    • Detroit Diesel
• Daimler Buses
  • Mercedes-Benz buses
  • Orion Bus Industries – operations winded down in 2012, and closed in 2013
  • 
  • Setra
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• Mercedes-Benz Vans
  • Mercedes-Benz (vans group)
• Daimler Financial Services
• 
  • Mercedes-Benz Bank
  • Mercedes-Benz Financial
  • Daimler Truck Financial
• Others
  • Mercedes AMG High Performance Powertrains (Builds engines for Formula 1 Racing)
  • 

The brand is known for luxury automobiles, buses, coaches, and trucks. The headquarters of Mercedes-Benz is in Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg, Germany.

The name first appeared in 1926 under Daimler-Benz, but traces its origins to Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft‘s 1901 Mercedes and to Karl Benz‘s 1886 Benz Patent-Motorwagen, which is widely regarded as the first gasoline powered automobile. Mercedes-Benz’s slogan is “The Best or Nothing”. Mercedes-Benz is one of the most recognized automotive brands worldwide.

History

Karl Benz. Benz made the 1886 Benz Patent Motorwagen, which is widely regarded as the first automobile.

Gottlieb Daimler, Founder of Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft.

Mercedes-Benz traces its origins to Karl Benz‘s creation of the first petrol-powered car, the Benz Patent Motorwagen, financed by Bertha Benz and patented in January 1886, and Gottlieb Daimler and engineer Wilhelm Maybach‘s conversion of a stagecoach by the addition of a petrol engine later that year. The Mercedes automobile was first marketed in 1901 by Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft. The first Mercedes-Benz brand name vehicles were produced in 1926, following the merger of Karl Benz’s and Gottlieb Daimler’s companies into the Daimler-Benz company. Throughout the 1930s, Mercedes-Benz produced the 770 model, a car that was popular during Germany’s Nazi period.Adolf Hitler was known to have driven these cars during his time in power, with bulletproof windshields. Most of the surviving models have been sold at auctions to private buyers. One of them is currently on display at the War Museum in Ottawa, Ontario. The pontiff’s Popemobile has often been sourced from Mercedes-Benz. Mercedes-Benz has introduced many technological and safety innovations that later became common in other vehicles.Mercedes-Benz is one of the best-known and established automotive brands in the world, and is also one of the world’s oldest automotive brand still in existence today in 2015, having produced the first petrol-powered car.

For information relating to the famous three-pointed star, see under the title Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft including the merger into Daimler-Benz.

Subsidiaries and alliances

As part of the Daimler AG company, the Mercedes-Benz Cars division includes Mercedes-Benz and Smart car production.

Mercedes-AMG

Mercedes-AMG became a majority owned division of Mercedes-Benz in 1999. The company was integrated into DaimlerChrysler in 1999, and became Mercedes-Benz AMG beginning on 1 January 1999.

McLaren Group

Motorsport

Mercedes-AMG was the official engine supplier for the second oldest and most successful F1 team by Grand Prix wins, McLaren Racing from 1995-2014. In 2013 it was announced that after the last year with Mercedes contract with McLaren, Mercedes would be dropped and be replaced by Honda, with whom McLaren had world championship wins in the past together.

Mercedes have since gone on to buy their own Formula 1 team, buying the former Honda Racing F1 team, Brawn GP, and turning it into Mercedes F1 in 2010. Despite a slow start, in 2012 the team began to show progress and rise to the front of the Grid with their first win coming from driver Nico Rosberg at the 2012 Chinese Grand Prix, before showing further progress again in 2013, when the team signed Lewis Hamilton from McLaren to replace the retiring Michael Schumacher. Hamilton’s first win for the team came at the 2013 Hungarian Grand Prix.

In 2014 the team won the Formula One World Constructors Title, with Driver Lewis Hamilton going on to win the Drivers Title. In 2015 the team won their second successive World Constructors Title and drivers title with Lewis Hamilton once

Road car manufacturing

From 2003 to 2009, Mercedes were in a joint venture with McLaren Group to manufacture the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren. At this time, Mercedes owned 40% of McLaren Group. Due to Mercedes purchasing Brawn GP, a F1 team, Mercedes decided to sell their shares back to Ron Dennis, as McLaren would be their rival in the F1 championship.

Maybach

Daimler’s ultra-luxury brand Maybach was under Mercedes-Benz cars division until 2013, when the production stopped due to poor sales volumes. It now exists under the Mercedes-Maybach name, with the models being ultra-luxury versions of Mercedes cars, such as the 2016 Mercedes-Maybach S600.

Production

Factories

Beside its native Germany, Mercedes-Benz vehicles are also manufactured or assembled in:

Sovereign state	Continent	Note
Algeria	Africa	Manufactures Busses and Trucks in cooperation with SNVI (Actros , Zetros, Unimog, and G-Class, Sprinter).
Argentina	South America	Manufactures buses, trucks and the Sprinter van. This is the first Mercedes-Benz factory outside of Germany. Built in 1951.
Austria	Europe	G-Class
Bosnia and Herzegovina	Europe
Brazil	South America	Manufactures trucks and buses. Established in 1956. The A-Class (W168) was produced from 1999 to 2005 and the C-Class was produced until 2010 as well.
Canada	North America
Colombia	South America	Assembly of buses, Established in Soacha 2012 and Funza 2015
China	Asia
Egypt	Africa	Via Egyptian German Automotive Company E-Class, C-Class and GLK
Finland	Europe	New A-series (W176) is manufactured in Uusikaupunki since late 2013, being the first M-B passenger car ever built in that country
Hungary	Europe
Jordan	Asia	Buses company factory, Elba House, Amman.
India	Asia	Bangalore (R&D). Pune (Passenger cars).Chennai (Daimler India Commercial Vehicles Pvt. Ltd.) – Trucks & Engine Manufacturing unit.
Indonesia	Asia /Australia
Iran	Asia	Not since 2010
Malaysia	Asia	Assembly of C, E and S class vehicles by DRB-HICOM.
Mexico	North America	Mercedes-Benz Mexico fully manufactures some Mercedes and Daimler vehicles completely from locally built parts (C-Class, E-Class, M-Class, International trucks, Axor, Atego, and Mercedes Buses), manufactures other models in complete knock down kits (CL-Class, CLK-Class, SL-Class, SLK-Class) and manufactures a select number of models in semi knockdown kits which use both imported components and locally sourced Mexican components (S-Class, CLS-Class, R-Class, GL-Class, Sprinter).
Nigeria	Africa	Assembly of buses, trucks, utility motors and the Sprinter van
Philippines	Asia
Russia	Eurasia	Joint venture Mercedes-Benz Car Trucks Vostok in Naberezhnye Chelny (jointly Kamaz). Available in trucks Actros, Axor, multi-purpose auto four wheel drive medium trucks Unimog. Mercedes-Benz Sprinter Classic is also produced in Russia.
Serbia	Europe	FAP produces Mercedes-Benz trucks under license.
Spain	Europe	Factory at Vitoria-Gasteiz Mercedes-Benz Vito, Viano and V-Class have been built there.
South Africa	Africa
South Korea	Asia	Mercedes-Benz Musso and MB100 models manufactured by SsangYong Motor Company.
Thailand	Asia	Assembly of C, E and S class vehicles by the Thonburi Group
Turkey	Eurasia	Mercedes-Benz Türk A.Ş.
United Kingdom	Europe	The SLR sports car was built at the McLaren Technology Centre in Woking. Brackley, Northamptonshire, is home to the Mercedes Grand Prix factory, and Brixworth, Northamptonshire is the location of Mercedes-Benz HighPerformanceEngines
United States	North America	The Mercedes-Benz GLE-Class Sport Utility and the full-sized GL-Class Luxury Sport Utility Vehicle are all built at the Mercedes-Benz U.S. International production facility near Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Trucks (6,000 per year in the early eighties) were once assembled in Hampton, VA.
Vietnam	Asia	Assembly of E-Class, C-Class, S-Class, GLK-Class and Sprinter. Established in 1995.

Quality rankings

Since its inception, Mercedes-Benz had maintained a reputation for its quality and durability. Objective measures looking at passenger vehicles, such as J. D. Power surveys, demonstrated a downturn in reputation in these criteria in the late 1990s and early 2000s. By mid-2005, Mercedes temporarily returned to the industry average for initial quality, a measure of problems after the first 90 days of ownership, according to J. D. Power. In J. D. Power’s Initial Quality Study for the first quarter of 2007, Mercedes showed dramatic improvement by climbing from 25th to 5th place and earning several awards for its models. For 2008, Mercedes-Benz’s initial quality rating improved by yet another mark, to fourth place. On top of this accolade, it also received the Platinum Plant Quality Award for its Mercedes’ Sindelfingen, Germany assembly plant. J. D. Power’s 2011 US Initial Quality and Vehicle Dependability Studies both ranked Mercedes-Benz vehicles above average in build quality and reliability. In the 2011 UK J. D. Power Survey, Mercedes cars were rated above average. A 2014 iSeeCars.com study for Reuters found Mercedes to have the lowest vehicle recall rate.

Models

See also: List of Mercedes-Benz vehicles

List of Mercedes-Benz vehicles

 GLA 200 in DüsseldorfMercedes-Benz Vito van, 2014-presentMercedes-Benz SLR McLaren (built from 2003 to 2010)Mercedes-Benz SSK, a roadster built from 1928 to 1932

The following is a List of Mercedes-Benz vehicles indexed by year of introduction.Mercedes Benz L 319 (produced 1955-1967)Mercedes Benz Auwärter 815D Vario minibus1999 Mercedes Benz CLK-GTR race car (foreground)

In 1926 Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft and Benz & Cie. merged forming Daimler-Benz and selling the Mercedes-Benz line of vehicles. Mercedes was a brand of DMG started in 1901. It has produced vehicles into the 21st century

Daimler and Benz vehicles

Before 1926, Mercedes-Benz was two separate companies that were competitors. One originated from Karl Benz, who invented the car, and Maybach and Daimler, who started Daimler which produced the Mercedes brand. Somehow the companies survived two world wars and various economic depressions to become one of the major suppliers of automobiles and trucks in the 21st century in Germany and in many parts of the World. The company has also supplied engines to many different products

Maybach left the company in 1907 to start his own company which was eventually bought by Mercedes-Benz in 1960.

Benz

History Benz

Benz & Company Rheinische Gasmotoren-Fabrik (aka Benz & Cie), founded 1883

Benz Patent-Motorwagen 1886-1893 (~25 produced)Benz Velo 1894Benz Viktoria 1894-1900 By 1895 1,132 vehicles produced1902 benz parsifal 12 14 hp big1902 Benz Parsifal 22 hp         1902-1903 – Benz Parsifal1903 Benz Parsifal 60 horsepower racing car1903 Benz Parsifal Phaeton Benz Parsifil 1902-1908  1907 24/40 hp Benz landauletBlitzen Benz 19091910 Benz Prinz Heinrich car Benz 1910 ‘Prinz Heinrich’1914 Benz 10-30 PS with Torpedo style bodywork Benz 10/30 PS 1912, 1921-1927 (also Daimler-Benz model after 1926)Benz 10/30(35) hp 1921

DMG (includes Mercedes)

Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft poster for a Mercedes Double Phaeton (1908)

Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft, founded in 1890 by Daimler and Maybach

Inventions of people Daimler and Maybach preceding DMG:

Daimler Motorized Carriage 1882Daimler Reitwagen 1885

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  Daimler Motor Car 18861889 Daimler Stahlradwagen – 1,5 PS, 18 km/h – Mercedes-Benz-Museum, Stuttgart, Bad Cannstatt Daimler Stahlradwagen 1889

  30 Daimler vehicles produced by 1895                                                                               Daimler belt-drive 1895-1899                                                                                            Daimler Phoenix 1897-1902 4 hp and 6 hpMercedes 35 hp 1901

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  Mercedes Simplex 1902

  1910-24 Mercedes Knight 10-30 hp – 25-65 hp   1913 Daimler ambulance Type UK with 10-30 hp Knight engine 1913-15 Mercedes Knight-2565-PS1920-21 Daimler ambulance Type UK with 16-45 hp Knight engine   1921 Mercedes Knight 16-40 hp, 16-45 hp, 16-50 hp Mercedes Knight (1910-1924)GP Mercedes 1908Mercedes Grand Prix Racing Car 19141921-24 Mercedes-Benz 15-70-100 PS Typ 400 Mercedes 15/70/100 PS, 1921-1924 (became Mercedes-Benz Typ 400 with merger)Mercedes 24/100/140 PS, 1924 – 1929 (became Mercedes-Benz Typ 630 with the merger)                                                                                                                                                  See also the related businesses:                                                                                                   Austro-Daimler

• • 
  • • USA Daimler and Steinway’s Daimler Motor Co.
    • Daimler Company (Daimler Motor Company (1896))

Mercedes-Benz cars (1926-present)

In 1926 Daimler-Benz was formed from the merger of DMG and Benz

1926-1930

1927 Mercedes-Benz 400 K Tourer Sinsheim, a Daimler-Benz product1927 Mercedes Benz 630K Mercedes-Benz 630 K (1926 – 1929)1926 Mercedes Benz 24-100-140 PS Roadster (This was the Mercedes 24/100/140 PS of DMG) Mercedes-Benz Model K

1927 mercedes benz S type 6cyl 6,78lt 180hp S-series, from 1927 with supercharged 6-cylinder engines1927 Mercedes-Benz S-Type 26/180 Sportwagen S (Sport)1927 26-170-225 hp Mercedes-Benz SS racing and touring sports car. SS (Super Sport)1928-32 Mercedes-Benz SSK model series W 06 II, SSK (Super Sport Kurz) 1927 Mercedes Benz SSKL (Super Sport Kurz Leicht) SSKL (Super Sport Kurz Leicht)

• K (Kurz-short) 2532
• Supercharged Mercedes Benz’s 1920’s + 1930’s
• S 1927
• SSK 1928
• SS 1928
• 10/50 hp “Stuttgart” 1929

Mercedes-Benz Three Wheeler1928 Mercedes-Benz 680S Saoutchik Torpedo

1930s

Mercedes-Benz 260D in museum in StuttgartMercedes Benz 130 W23 (1935)1931 Mercedes Benz Mannheim 370 S Sport-Cabriolet Mercedes Benz Mannheim 350/370 (W10) 1929-19341936 Mercedes Benz 170 W28 H 170 Saloon 1931-1932130H W23 1934

                 1933-34 Mercedes Benz 150 Sport Saloon (W30) 150H 1934-61938 Mercedes Benz W31 typ G4 W31 1934-1939 (6 wheels)Mercedes Benz 170V M135 1697cc 1935-1953

• 770 (Grosser) 1930-1943 in two series:

  

  Die Eröffnung der grossen Automobilausstellung in den Ausstellungshallen am Kaiserdamm in Berlin! Der Tauerste Luxuswagen Deutschland, ein Mecedes-Limousine, welche 46.000,– Mark kostet.

  1930-1938 Mercedes Benz 770 (W07) on display at the 1931 Berlin Motor ShowMercedes-Benz W07-W150 or 770 Pullman-Limousine W150 1938-19431934-36 Mercedes 500K (type W29) Cabriolet is a grand touring car1939 Mercedes Benz 540K-Autobahnkurier 540K 1936-19431938 Mercedes benz 260D 1936-19401937 Mercedes-Benz 320 (W 142) Saloon was a modern luxury-class touring car.1937 Mercedes Benz W 125 Donington W125 19371939 Mercedes Benz 230 Limousine 230 1938Mercedes Benz W154, W163 1938, 1939Mercedes-Benz W136 (170 V)

  1935–1942 75,006 units         1947–1955 83,190 unitsMercedes-Benz W125 Rekordwagen – 1938

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  1939 Mercedes-Benz T80

Production disrupted from WWII from 1939-1945, and restarted by late 1940s

1940s

Mercedes-Benz W136 1947–1955Mercedes Benz 170S (W191) 1949-1955

1950s

Mercedes-Benz 180b, 442,963 built 1953–1962Mercedes-Benz 190D, with post-1960 update

4 Cylinder

Mercedes-Benz W136 1947–1955Mercedes Benz 170S (W191) 1949-1955Mercedes Benz 120 180/180D (W120) 190/190D (W121) 1953-1962Mercedes Benz 190SL (W121) 1955-1963

6 Cylinder

1960 Mercedes Benz 300SL Roadster (W198 II)Mercedes Benz 220 (W187) 1951-1955Mercedes Benz 219 (W219) 1956-19591958 Mercedes Benz 220a/220S (W180) 1954-1959Mercedes Benz Limousine 300/300S (W186 W189 W188) 1951-1962Mercedes Benz W196 (W196) GP 1954Mercedes Benz 300SLR (W196S) 1955Mercedes Benz 300SL (W198) 1954-1963 in two series:

• Gullwing Coupe 1954-1957
• Roadster 1958-1963

1960s

1969 Mercedes-Benz 280 SL1965 Mercedes Benz 190c  Sedan 1962-1965

1966 Mercedes Benz 230 W 110 in Egypte 230 1965-1966

Mercedes Benz 200 W 110 kombi 1966-1968Mercedes Benz 200D 1966-1967Mercedes-Benz W111/220SE 1960-1966Mercedes Benz 250S, 250SE 300SE 280S 280SE 280SEL(W108/W109) 1965-1972Mercedes Benz 230 1968-1972Mercedes Benz 250 Saloon 1968-1972Mercedes Benz 600 (W100) 1963-1981Mercedes Benz 230SL 250SL 280SL (W113) “Pagoda” 1963-1971

1970s

Pre-facelift Mercedes-Benz W115 220Mercedes Benz 280 (W114) 1972-19761975 Mercedes Benz 280C (W114) 1973-1976Mercedes Benz 300D (W114) 1975-1976Mercedes Benz V123 Limo (Euro-spec) W123 1976-1985Mercedes Benz G 350 BlueTEC (W463) G-Class 1979-present1978 Mercedes-Benz 280 SE (W116) S-Class W116 1972-19791957 Mercedes Benz 300 SL Roadster (W198) SL-Class 1957-1971 Mercedes-Benz W113 W113 1963-19711987 Mercedes Benz 560 SL roadster (Australia) R107 1972-1989

1980s

The 1980s marked a period of increasing demand in America, personified by thousands of Grey-market imported cars, such as this Mercedes-Benz 500 SE shown hereMercedes Benz 560SECMercedes Benz 190E W201 190 1982-19931977 Mercedes Benz 300D W123 300D 1977-1985Mercedes Benz 300CD Turbodiesel coupe (US-version) 300CD 1978-1985Mercedes Benz 300SD 1981-19851987-92 Mercedes Benz 300 SEL (W126) sedan 300SEL 1987-19911987 Mercedes Benz 300SDL 300SDL 1986-1987Mercedes Benz 300TD 1978-19851990 Mercedes Benz 350SDL 1990-1991

                          1985 Mercedes Benz 500SE 1984-19911985 Mercedes Benz 500SEC 1984-1991   1992 Mercedes Benz 500SEL 1984-19911986 Mercedes Benz 560SEL 1986-1991Mercedes Benz 560SEC 1986-1991Mercedes Benz 300E 1986-1993Mercedes Benz 300CE 300CE 1986 – 1993Mercedes-Benz 200E 1980-1985

1990s

2013 Mercedes Benz A 200 Sport AMG Line (W176).jpg A-Class 1997-1997-00 Mercedes Benz C 200 (W202) Classic sedan  C-Class 1993-2000 Mercedes Benz CLK 320 (C208) Elegance coupe CLK-Class 1998-2013 Mercedes Benz E 220 CDI Avantgarde (W 212, Facelift) E-Class 1995-M-Class 1997-2015, renamed GLE-class in 20152000 Mercedes Benz SL (R129) SL-Class 1989-2001Mercedes Benz Vaneo 1997-20041992 Mercedes-Benz S-Class1987–1992 Mercedes-Benz 300 SEL (W126) sedan Mercedes-Benz W126 (to ~1991)Mercedes-Benz S-Class (W140)Mercedes-Benz S-Class (W220) (1998-2005/6)see also Maybach

2000s

One standout in the MB lineup in the 21st century has been the Mercedes-Benz G-ClassMercedes-Benz SLK, 1996-2004Mercedes-Benz M-Class, models go by ML430, ML500, etc. naming style

2014 Mercedes-Benz A 250 (W176) Sport hatchback (Australia) Mercedes-Benz A-Class2000-04 Silver Mercedes A140 W168 side.JPG W168 2000-20042004-12 Mercedes Benz A 180 CDI Elegance (W 169) W169 2004-2012                  Mercedes-Benz B-Class2006-08 Mercedes-Benz B 180 CDI (W245) hatchback W245 2005-2011               Mercedes-Benz C-Class2001–04 Mercedes-Benz C 220 CDI SportCoupé (Germany) W203 2000-20072008-11 Mercedes Benz CLC 200 Kompressor (CL203) coupe W204 2007-2014

• 2015 Mercedes Benz C 220 BlueTEC Exclusive (W 205)                                        Mercedes-Benz CL-Class
• 2000-06 Mercedes Benz CL Class W215 2000-2006 2007-14 Mercedes Benz CL 500 Sport-Paket AMG (C 216) W216 2007-
• 1997-09 Mercedes Benz CLK Cabriolet (A209)
• 2004-present Mercedes-Benz CLS 350 BlueEFFICIENCY-series EDITION I C 218
• Mercedes-Benz E-Class 1998–03 Mercedes-Benz E 240 (W210) Elegance sedan W210 1995-2002
  • 2009 Mercedes E-Klasse S 400 Hybrid Avantgarde (W211).jpg W211 2003-2009
  • 2009-present Mercedes Benz E 220 CDI Avantgarde (W 212, Facelift) W212 2009-
  • 2012 Mercedes Benz G 63 AMG.JPG Mercedes-Benz G-Class 2000-
  • 2010 Mercedes Benz GL 450 CDI 4MATIC (X164) Mercedes-Benz GL-Class X164 2007-
  • 1998-01 Mercedes Benz ML 320 (W163) wagon Mercedes-Benz M-Class W163 1998-2005
  • 2007-08 Mercedes Benz ML 320 CDI (W164 MY08) wagon W164 2006-2011
  • 2011-present Mercedes Benz ML 350 BlueTEC 4MATIC (W 166) W166 2011-
  • 2008 Mercedes Benz R320CDI L AMG-Sportpaket.JPG R-Class 2006-    Mercedes-Benz S-Class
  • 
  •  Mercedes Benz S-Class (W220) 1999-20052011 Mercedes Benz S-Class (W221)S 320 CDI 4MATIC L (V 221) 2006-2013
    • 2014 Mercedes Benz S550 W 222 (US) lwb W222 2014-                       Mercedes-Benz SLK-ClassR171 2005-2010 1998 Mercedes Benz SLK R170.jpg 1998-20042013 Mercedes Benz SL 550 vf 7-spd automatic.jpg                            Mercedes-Benz SL-Class 2001- 2006-08 Mercedes Benz SL 350 (R230) roadster 5th gen.jpg2006 Mercedes-Benz SLR-McLaren 2003-2009722 Edition 2006-2009 Mercedes Benz SLR McLaren 722 Roadster variant

2010s

A CLA-clas in Düsseldorf; version CLA 200. This new smaller class featured front-wheel drive and a lowered financial barrier to a new Mercedes product

2011 Mercedes Benz SLS AMG C 197 2010-20132013 Mercedes-Benz CLA 200-Class C 117 2010-20132014 Mercedes Benz GLA 200 CDI Urban (X 156)2013 Mercedes Benz SL 550 R231 vf 7spd-automatic R231.jpg

In the 2015 renaming several existing product lines were renamed

GLK-class to GLC-class

M-class to GLE-class

GL-class to GLS-class

Name change of Mercedes-Benz C63 AMG to Mercedes-AMG C63 in 2014.

Mercedes-Maybach S600

B-Class Electric Drive introduced (Special version of existing B-Class with no piston engine)

Mercedes-Benz SUVs

2014 G-Class G63 AMG 6×62012 Mercedes-Benz M-Class ML 250 BlueTEC 4MATIC (W 166) Mercedes-Benz M-ClassMercedes Benz G 350 BlueTEC (W463) Mercedes-Benz G-Class2013 Mercedes Benz G 63 AMG Brabus B63S 700 6×6  G63 AMG 6×6 (2013–2015)

Mercedes-Benz G 500 4×4² in off-road test Mercedes-Benz G500 4×4²2012 Mercedes Benz GL 350 BlueTEC 4MATIC Sport-Paket AMG (X 166) Mercedes-Benz GL-Class2014 Mercedes Benz GLK 220 CDI 4MATIC Sport-Paket AMG (X 204, Facelift) Mercedes-Benz GLK-Class

Post 2015 naming restructure:                                                                                                     Mercedes Benz GLA-Class2016 Mercedes Benz GLC 220 d 4MATIC AMG Line (X 253) Mercedes-Benz GLC-Class2013 Mercedes-Benz GLE ML 350 BlueTEC 4MATIC (W 166) Mercedes-Benz GLE-Class GLE-Coupe2014 Mercedes Benz GL 500 4MATIC (X 166) Mercedes-Benz GLS-Class

Mercedes-Benz vans

Mercedes-Benz MB100, produced 1981-1995

Mercedes-Benz Citan (2012)

1950s

Mercedes-Benz L 319 1955-1967 – mid-sized van from 3,5 to 3,9 tonnes GVWR

1970s

Mercedes-Benz T2 1967-1986 – heavy Van from 3,5 to 6,79 tonnes GVWR –1967 Mercedes Benz O309 Mercedes-Benz O309 – busvariant of T2

1980s

Mercedes-Benz TN or T1 1977-1995 – mid-sized van from 2,55 to 4,6 tonnes GVWR, predecessor to the sprinter1981-95 Mercedes-Benz MB100-180 – mid-sized van from 2,65 to 3,5 tonnes GVWRMercedes Benz T1 Transporter1975 Mercedes Benz N1300 first DKW F1000 L with 3 cyl 981cc 2 stroke DKW engine later with MB1300 Diesel1981-87 Mercedes-Benz MB 100 spanish generación1988-95 Mercedes Benz MB 100 ca. 207.000 Stück1996-03 First Mercedes Benz Vito W638 Vclass 560.000st((2013)2003-14 2nd Mercedes Benz Vito(Viano) W/V 6392014  3rd Mercedes Benz Vito W447 V-class1970-77 Mercedes Benz L206 Harburger Transporter first Hanomag-Henschel 305.0001977-95 Mercedes Benz 207D T1 (601+602 ca. 970.000)1995-05 Mercedes Benz Sprinter 616CDI 156hp Ambulance (1.3000.000)2006-present Mercedes Benz Sprinter W/V 9061956-67 ca. 140.000 Mercedes Benz L 319-L 405(diesel) + L 407(petrol) 1967-86 ca. 540.000 Mercedes Benz T2 first generation1986-96 138.407 Mercedes Benz T2 2nd gen.1996-13 90.743 Mercedes Benz Vario 815D

21st century

All other previous models on the German Wikipedia

• Mercedes-Benz Vito – light van based on the Viano MPV with a payload of approx 1 tonne
  • Mercedes-Benz Metris in the United States
• Mercedes-Benz Sprinter – mid-sized van, based on a joint venture with the Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles Crafter, with payloads of 2 to 6 tonne. Also produced as a Dodge in USA and Canada with the name FreightlinerSprinter.
  • Sprinter 414 416CDI – ambulance
  • Sprinter 316CDI – light ambulance
• Mercedes-Benz Vario 1996-2013 – heavy van from 3,5 to 7,5 tonnes GVWR
• Mercedes-Benz Citan 2012-

Concept models

Mercedes-Benz C112 (1991)

                                                                                                     Mercedes-Benz Bionic inspired by nature, in particular the yellow boxfish resulting a high volume to low drag ratio (2005)

                                                                                                            Yellow boxfish

 F700 concept car (2007)

Mercedes-Benz C111 – sports car and test vehicle for different high performance engines (wankel engine and later diesel engines) shown in 1969, 1970 and 1978,1979

• Mercedes-Benz Schulz Studie CW311 (1979)
• Mercedes-Benz Auto 2000 – four-door saloon shown in 1981 Frankfurt Auto Show
• Mercedes-Benz NAFA – microcar, 1982
• Mercedes-Benz C112 – sports car and development mule developed in 1991Mercedes-Benz F 100 – car introduced in 1991 North American International Auto Show
• Mercedes-Benz Coupe Concept – car introduced in 1993 Geneva Motor Show
• Mercedes Benz S500 Shooting Break
• Mercedes Benz SLK 2 (1994)
• Mercedes-Benz Vision A93 Concept – small city car, preview of 1997 A-Class
• Mercedes-Benz Vario Research Car – one car, four vehicles, introduced in 1995 Geneva Motor ShowMercedes-Benz F 200 Imagination – two-door coupé introduced in 1996 Paris Motor Show, preview of 1999 S-Class (W220)
• Mercedes-Benz F 300 Life Jet – three-wheel car/motorcycle unveiled in 1997 Frankfurt Motor Show
• Mercedes-Benz Vision SLR – prototype of Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren, unveiled in 1999 North American International Auto ShowMercedes-Benz Vision SLA – convertible with details of the SLR, but based on the A-Class platform, unveiled in 2000 North American International Auto ShowMercedes-Benz Vision GST – car shown in 2002 North American International Auto Show, preview of R-ClassMercedes-Benz Vision CLS 2003

Mercedes-Benz F 400 Carving – a two-seat roadster unveiled in 2002 Tokyo Motor Show

• Mercedes Benz F 500 Mind – four-door fastback saloon unveiled in 2003 Tokyo Motor Show
• Mercedes-Benz F 600 HYGENIUS – compact fuel cell car, unveiled in 2005 Tokyo Motor ShowMercedes-Benz Bionic – car unveiled in 2005 DaimlerChrysler Innovation Symposium in Washington, modeled after boxfishMercedes-Benz Ocean Drive – a four-door convertible based on the S600, shown in 2007                                                                                                  Mercedes-Benz F700 – large luxury saloon featuring the small capacity / high output DiesOtto engine, unveiled at the 2007 Frankfurt Motor Show.Mercedes-Benz Concept FASCINATION – shooting-brake giving a preview of the 2010 E-Class (W212), unveiled at 2008 Paris Motor ShowMercedes-Benz S 400 BlueHYBRID 2010Mercedes-Benz BlueZERO (2009)Mercedes-Benz F-Cell Roadster – open two-seater roadster, 2009Mercedes-Benz F 800 Style – four-door sedan shown in 2010 Geneva Motor Show
• Mercedes-Benz BIOME
• Mercedes-Benz BlitzenBenz (2010)Mercedes-Benz F 125 – experimental luxury vehicle shown in 2011                               2011 Mercedes Benz Silver Lightning                                                                             Mercedes Benz Silver Lightning (2011)
• Mercedes-Benz Unimog Concept (2011)
• Mercedes-Benz Ener-G-Force (2012)
• Mercedes-Benz Concept GLA SUV
• Mercedes-Benz AMG Vision Grand Turismo (2013)
• SF1 Mercedes-Benz Concept Car
• Mercedes Benz Vision G-Code
• Mercedes-Benz Intelligent Aerodynamic Automobile
• Mercedes-Benz F1015

• 

  Mercedes-Benz G500 4×4^2 Showcar

  Mercedes-Benz G500 4×4² (2015)

Race cars

Street CLK GTR in Romania

Mercedes-Benz CLR at Nürburgring

See Mercedes-Benz in motorsport

• Willhelm Bauer’s Daimler racer
• Jellinek’ Daimler 35 PS Mercedes
• Blitzen Benz 1909, achieved 226.91 km/h (141.94 mph) in November 1909
• Benz Tropfenwagen (tear-drop) 1923
• Mercedes-Benz SSK Rennwagen version (1928 to 1932)
• Mercedes-Benz W125 Rekordwagen – 1937
• Mercedes-Benz T80 – experimental racing car developed for high speed in 1939
• Sauber Mercedes-Benz C9 – 1987
• Mercedes-Benz CLK GTR – racing car primarily, 25 production cars made to meet regulation
• Mercedes-Benz CLR (1999)
• Mercedes-Benz C-Coupé DTM (2011)
• Mercedes-Benz AMG C-Class DTM (W203)
• Mercedes-Benz AMG C-Class DTM (W204)
• Mercedes-Benz 300SEL 6.3
• Silver Arrows
• Mercedes-Benz W125
• Mercedes-Benz W154
• Mercedes-Benz W165
• Mercedes-Benz W194
• Mercedes-Benz W196
• Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR (W196S)
• Mercedes-Benz W25

F1

A Mercedes-Benz F1 race car2012 Mercedes F1 W032013 Mercedes F1 W04 Lewis Hamilton Malaysia FP2 1.jpg2014 The F1 W05 Hybrid, driven by Lewis Hamilton, during the 2014 Singapore Grand Prix2015 The F1 W06 Hybrid, driven by Nico Rosberg, during the 2015 Malaysian Grand Prix

• Mercedes F1 W07 Hybrid

 

• Mercedes MGP W01
• Mercedes MGP W02
• Mercedes-Benz W194
• Mercedes-Benz W196

Mercedes-Benz trucks

Including really big trucks for trailer aka semi’s

The chart of Mercedes-Benz truck models (including the internal designations), 1926-1944. Horizontally: years of production Vertically: payload in tons (approximately) Yellow boxes: L1/L2/L5 family, Light-blue boxes: Lo2000 family, White boxes: the rest.

1926-1944

The first Mercedes-Benz truck range, presented at the 1926 Berlin Motor Show (October) and at the 1927 International Motor Show for Trucks and Special Vehicles in Cologne (May) included three basic models with the payloads of 1.5, 2.5 and 5 tons. Each model was available with a standard and a low-frame chassis. Low chassis made sense especially that time to make easier loading and unloading of the vehicle. Also the low chassis has been used to build the buses. The models with the standard chassis were L1, L2 and L5 (L stood for Lastwagen, German word for a truck, and the digit stood for the rated payload in tons). The models with the low chassis were N1, N2 and NJ5/N5 (N stood for Niederwagen, German word means a low car). The trucks were equipped with the 4 cylinders petrol engines (M14, M2 and M5), developing 45HP, 55HP and 70 HP. Mercedes-Benz L1 and L2 were the new models, but Mercedes-Benz L5 truck was basically a continuation of famous Benz 5CN truck, which was developed before the merge of Benz & Cie and Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft companies.

In 1927 Mercedes-Benz presented its first diesel engine (OM5), which immediately became a sensation. It was the world’s first six-cylinder diesel engine, installed on the commercial vehicle. Also from 1927 Mercedes-Benz offered the more powerful 6 cylinders petrol engines (M16, M26 and M36) developing 50HP, 70HP and 100 HP. Four cylinders engines were discontinued only one year later. Therefore, in 1927-1928 most of the trucks from the series L1,L2,L5 were available with 4 or 6 cylinders engines. To distinguish that, 6 cylinders versions of the trucks were referred sometimes as, for example, L1/6 or N2/6.

In 1927-1928 Mercedes-Benz also expanded the range of the truck models, adding the small model L3/4 with the payload of 750 kg (3/4 ton), which was developed from the passenger car Typ 200 Nürnberg, and a heavy three axis model N56 with the payload 7-9 tons. The payloads of L1 and L2 models was increased with the new 6 cylinder engines from 1.5 to 1.75 tons (model L1/N1) and from 2.5 to 3.0-4.0 tons (model L2/N2). To fill the newly formed gap between L1 and L2 models, Mercedes-Benz offered new 2.5 tons model L45/N46 and (a bit later) 2.75/3.0 tons model L57/N58.

Resulting diversity of the trucks made an impressive lineup of Mercedes-Benz commercial vehicles, but also required a new, better system for their designations. In fact, by the year of 1930, only the model L5 still referred to its payload (5 tons). L1 model’s payload has been gradually increased up to 2 tons, L2 model’s payload – up to 4 tons, and L45/N46 and L57/N58 model names were not saying about their payload at all from the beginning, but were rather the company’s internal model designations. So in October 1930 a new system for the commercial vehicle designation has been introduced. Basically, instead of the one digit, standing for the rated payload in tons, a four digits number, standing for the rated payload in kg, has now been used. This number followed the same letter L for the trucks (as before), or the letters Lo (LO) for the low chassis, or the letter O for the buses (O stood for the German word Omnibus, what is translated as a bus). According to that, the model L1 was renamed to L2000, model L45 was renamed to L2500, model L57 was renamed to L3000, model L2 was renamed to L4000, model L5 was renamed to L5000 and the model N56 was renamed to L8500. This nomenclature has been used for more than 20 years, until 1954.

1945-1960

 The chart of Mercedes-Benz truck models (including the internal designations), 1945-1970. Horizontally: years of production Vertically: payload in tons (approximately) Grey boxes: L4500/L5000 family, White boxes: L3500/L4500 family, Dark-grey boxes: L6600 family, Green boxes: Kurzhauber (light) family, Blue boxes: Kurzhauber (heavy) family, Pink boxes: Kubische kabine (light) family, Purple boxes: Kubische kabine (medium) family.

1990s

Mercedes-Benz SK (Schwere Klasse)

Mercedes-Benz Leichtlastwagen MB 700. Dieser Lastwagen geht bei der indonesischen Beteiligungsgesellschaft “P.T. German Motor Manufacturing” in Jakarta 1994 in Serienproduktion.

Mercedes-Benz MB700 (coe)

Mercedes-Benz MB800 (Built by Mercedes-Benz Türk since 1996, this five-ton cab-over truck uses an Indonesian cabin, a Brazilian engine, and a Spanish transmission)

2000s

Mercedes-Benz Arocs 6×6Pre facelift 1997 Mercedes Benz AtegoMercedes Benz Atego Facelift frontMercedes-Benz Axor – mid-sized truck from 18 to 26 tonnes in rigid and articulated

Actros

Actros

Mercedes Benz ActrosMercedes Benz ActrosMercedes-Benz Actros – heavy duty rigid and premium articulated — 18 to 250 tonnesMercedes Benz Actros Mercedes Benz Actros

Mercedes-Benz Econic – low floor version of the Axor for refuse and specialist applications Mercedes Benz UnimogMercedes-Benz Unimog – for special purpose applications and transport across extreme terrain

Mercedes Benz UnimogMercedes-Benz Zetros – off-road truck for extreme operations                                            1828L (F581) Mobile Casualty Treatment Centre                                                                           1517L Mobile Casualty Treatment CentreMercedes-Benz Arocs 2013Mercedes-Benz models by type code1926-28 Mercedes Benz 5-25 PS (W01 – W14) Typ 140 – 130 W01 1926 typ 140 (prototype)1926-28 Mercedes Benz 8-38 HP Landaulet Taxi (W02)1926-28 MERCEDES BENZ 8-38 Typ 200 (W02)                   1927 Mercedes Benz 8-38hp (W02) Stuttgart 2001926-28 MERCEDES BENZ 8-38 Typ 200 (W02) 1928-33 MERCEDES BENZ 8-38 Typ Stuttgart 200 (W02) 1928-33 MERCEDES BENZ 8-38 Typ Stuttgart 200 (W02) 1926-1936 Stuttgart 200, L3/41926 Mercedes Benz W031926 Mercedes-Benz W03 a

1926-27 mercedes benz w300 (W03)

1926-27 Mercedes Benz W03 1926-1927 typ 300MERCEDES BENZ Typ12-55-14-60-W03-W04-W05–2557 71926-29 Mercedes Benz 12-55 HP (W03+W04) typ 300-320 W04 1927-1928 typ 300, typ 320

1926 Mercedes Benz 12-55hp WO3 6×6 g1 (Prototype Car)1926-29 MERCEDES BENZ Typ 12-55 – 14-60 (W03+W04+W05)a W05 1928-1929 typ 3501929 Mercedes Benz W06 1926-1934 S, SS, SSK, SSKL1932 Mercedes Benz W07 770 Cabrio F WilhelmII 01.jpg W07 1930-1938 typ 770 “Grosser”               1930 Mercedes Benz Typ Nürburg 460 W08.jpg1929 Mercedes Benz Nürburg 460 W08 1928-1939 Nuerburg 460, Nuerburg 500

W09 1928-1931 typ 350, G31931 Mercedes Benz 370S W10 Sport Cabriolet Manheim.jpg  W10 1929-1935 Mannheim 350, Mannheim 370, Mannheim 380, G3a1929-34 Mercedes Benz Typ 10-50 PS W11 1929-1934 Stuttgart 2601929-35 Mercedes Benz W12 1930 Mannheim 370 K

Mercedes Benz 1930

W13 1930 Mannheim 370 S1928 Prototype of the Mercedes-Benz W14 5-25 hp Saloon.1 W14 1928 typ 130 (prototype)                               1931 Mercedes Benz Typ 170 W 15 170-6 1931-1936 typ 170, L300

Mercedes Benz 1932

W16 1932 typ 270

Mercedes Benz 1931                                       1931 mercedes benz 1931 120h w17 prototype 12 excemp W17 1931 typ 120 (prototype, rearmotor)1933 Mercedes Benz Type 290 Cabriolet B W18 1933-1937 typ 290 1935 Mercedes Benz W18 290 A Cabriolet.jpg1935 Mercedes Benz W18 290 LWB Cabrio A.jpgMercedes Benz Typ 290 Spezial-Roadster W18Mercedes Benz Typ 290 Spezial-Roadster W18 rear1936 Mercedes Benz 290 Cabriolet D W18Mercedes Benz 290A W18 white vl TCE1936-37 Mercedes Benz-290 W18 Wehrmacht-Kübelwagen                        1934 Mercedes Benz 290 W18 Kübelwagen W18 III 1934 typ 290 Kübelwagen I(amphibie)

1934 Mercedes Benz Typ 380 Cabriolet C W19 1932-1933 typ 380 S                            1932-33 Mercedes Benz Mannheim 380S W20 1932-1933 typ 380 S1935 Mercedes Benz 200 W21 1933-1937 typ 200, typ 2301933-34 MERCEDES BENZ Typ 380 W22 1933-1934 typ 3801934-36 MERCEDES BENZ130-W23–2634 1+2+3 W23 1934-1936 typ 130 (rearmotor)1936+1939-42 Mercedes Benz 540 K W24 1936, 1943 typ 540 KW25 1934-1936 W25 Silver Arrow1933 Mercedes Benz Silberpfeile W-25D.jpg W25D 1933 typ 175 (prototype)

?

W27 1935 Mannheim 390, Mannheim 4001936 Mercedes Benz W28 170H W28 1936-1939 typ 170 H1934 Mercedes Benz 500 K Special Roadster W29 3215 1934-1939 typ 500 K, typ 540 K1935 Mercedes-Benz 500K W29

Mercedes Benz 500 K at Turin W291936 Mercedes Benz 500 K Spezial-Roadster W291934 Mercedes-Benz 500 K Sport-Roadster W291935 Mercedes Benz 500 K W29 mit Erdmann-&-Rossi-Karosserie für den König des Irak

1939 Mercedes-Benz W29K540K Cabriolet, Baujahr 19391935 Mercedes Benz 150 Roadster W30 1935-1936 typ 150 (rearmotor)1938 Mercedes Benz G4 W31 1934-1939 typ G4W34 1934 typ 150 (rearmotor)Daimler-Benz L 1000 W37 Heusenstamm. W37 1929-1936 L1000 (Stuttgart 260 based)

Mercedes Benz 600 Pullman Landaulet Limousine W100 1963-19811926-28 MERCEDES BENZ G1 (W103).jpg

Mercedes Geschiedenis Modellen En Types 1886 2001 Mercedes Benz W103 19261928 Mercedes Benz W103 19261928 – E-wall-Car

W103 1926-1928 G1, G2

W104 1928 G21954-59 MERCEDES BENZ S-KLASSE PONTON (W180-W105-W128) 219 W105 1956-1959 219

W107 1971-1989 280 SL – 560 SLC1972 Mercedes Benz 280 SE W108 1965-1972 250 S – 280 SEL1968 Mercedes-Benz 300SEL 6.3 W109 1965-1972 300 SELW110 1961-1968 190, 200, 230W111 1959-1971 220, 250, 280 /S/SE1965 Mercedes Benz W112 300SE 1961-1967 300 SE            1968 Mercedes Benz W113 280Sl.W113 1963-1971 230 SL, 250 SL, 280 SLMercedes Benz-E Class W114 W115.jpg1967-76 Mercedes-Benz E-Klasse (W114/115) W114 1968-1976 230.6, 250, 250C, 280, 280E, 280C, 280CE1975 Mercedes-Benz 240D W115 1968-1976 200, 200D, 220, 220D, 230, 240D, 240D 3.0, 300DMercedes-Benz 450 SEL 6.9 W116 1972-1980 280 S – 450 SEL

2013 Piecha Design Mercedes-Benz CLA 250 W117 2013 aro 19 2.0 Turbo 211 cv 2013- CLA1960 Mercedes Benz w118 (Prototype Car)1960 Mercedes-Benz W118-W119 Prototype1960 Prototype of a compact Mercedes-Benz dating from around 1960 W1181960 Mercedes-Benz W118-W119 Prototype a W118 1960 prototypeW119 1960 prototypeMercedes Benz 180 2 v sst W120 1953-1962 180, 180DMercedes-Benz 190D W121 1956-1961 190, 190D

1955-63 Mercedes-Benz 190 SL (R121)  R121 1955-1963 190 SL

History of Mercedes Benz W1221956 Mercedes Benz W122 prototype 03.jpg W122 1956 prototypeMercedes W123 1976-1985 200, 230, 230E, 250, 280E, 300EMercedes Benz W125 1936-1938 W125 Silver ArrowMercedes Benz W124 1985-1996 200 – 500E1987 Mercedes Benz 500 SE W126 1979-1993 260SE – 560SEL1960 Mercedes 190sl W127.jpg1955 mercedes-benz-190-sl-w-121-1955-1963-1955-3.jpg1955 Mercedes Benz oldnew190sl.jpg

History of Mercedes Benz 190sl W121

1955 Mercedes-Benz 190 SL W127 1955 190 SL (prototype)1959 Mercedes Benz 220SE W128 1958-1960 220 SE1989 Mercedes-Benz R129 SL SC06.1999 Mercedes-Benz R129 SL500 R129 1989-2001 280 SL – 600 SL1939 Mercedes-Benz-580-K W129-Sport-Roadster W129 1939-1940 typ 540 K, 580 K                                              1935-36 Mercedes-Benz-150 Heckmotor Sport W130                       1935-36 Mercedes-Benz-150 Heckmotor Sport W130 open            1935-36 Mercedes Benz 150 Heckmotor Sport W130

1934 Mercedes-Benz-W-130-Production-5-1934-2 W130 1935 typ 150 (rearmotor)

Mercedes-Benz Replica G-4 W131 Grosser Six Luggage Carrier S-N 440891E Black-BlackMercedes-Benz Replica G-4 W131 Grosser Six Seven-Passenger Convertible Sedan1934 mercedes benz 520 540 g 4 W131.jpg1934 mercedes benz 520 540 g 4 W131a.jpg W131 1934 G 4

W132 1934-1935 typ 240

W132 II 1935 typ 2501935 Mercedes-Benz-170VG W133 III W133 III 1935 typ 170 VG Kuebelsitzer 4×4             1935 mercedes-benz-05 170VG (W133 III).jpg

W133 1935 typ 160 H

W133 II 1935 typ 160 HM

W133 III 1935 typ 170 VG Kuebelsitzer 4×4

W134 1934 typ 175 D (prototype)

W134 I 1935 typ 190 D (prototype)                                       1936 mercedes benz 1936 W135 cabrio papler  W135 1936-1937 typ 290 Kübelwagen II

W136 1936-1942 typ 170 V

W137 1930-1936 L1000 (Stuttgart 260 based)

W138 1936-1940 typ 260 D

W139 1936 typ 170 VL Kuebelsitzer 4×4, 160 VL

W140 1991-1998 300 SE – 600 SEL

W140 I 1935 typ 240 S

W141 1935-1936 typ 175 DX (prototype)

W142 1937-1942 typ 320, 320 WK, 340 WK

W143 1937-1941 typ 230

W144 1936-1937 typ 130 V (Roehr prototype)

W145 1936-1937 typ 190 V (Roehr prototype)

W146 1936-1937 typ 260 V (Roehr prototype)

W147 1938 typ 400 V (Roehr prototype)

W148 1941-1942 typ 600 V

W149 1938-1939 typ 200 V Sportwagen

W150 1938-1943 typ 770 “Grosser”

W152 1937-1940 G5

W153 1938-1943 typ 230, typ 340

W154 1938-1939 W154 Silver Arrow

W156 coming soon GLA

W157 1941-1942 typ 600 K

W158 1938-1942 typ 170 VX (prototype)

W159 1941-1942 typ 260 (prototype)

W160 1938 typ 400 VM (Roehr prototype)

W161 1938 typ 400 VMS (Roehr prototype)

W163 1997-2005 ML

W164 2005-2011 ML

X164 2006-2012 GL

W164 1939 typ 150 BX (prototype)

W165 1939 W165 Silver Arrow

W166 2011- ML

X166 2012- GL

W166 1939 typ 290 D (prototype)

W168 1943 typ 290 D (prototype)

W168 1997-2004 A

W169 2004-2012 A

R170 1996-2004 SLK

R171 2004-2011 SLK

R172 2011- SLK

R197 2009-2014 SLS AMG Roadster

W173 1942 typ 650 (prototype)

W176 2012- A

W177 coming soon SLM

W179 1942-1944 G6

W180 1984-1959 220 /S

W185 1939 typ 120 FX (prototype)

W186 1951-1957 300

W187 1951-1955 220

W188 1951-1958 300 S

W189 1957-1962 300

C190 2014- AMG GT

W191 1952-1953 170 S, 170 DS

W194 1952-1953 300 SL

W195 1937 W125 Rekordwagen

W196 1954-1955 W196 Formula 1

W196S 1955 300 SLR

C197 2009-2014 SLS AMG

W198 1954-1963 300SL

C199 2003-2010 SLR

W201 1982-1993 190

W202 1993-2000 C

W203 2001-2007 C

CL203 2008-2011 CLC

W204 2007- C

X204 2008- GLK

W205 coming soon C

C207 2009- E coupe

C208 1996-2003 CLK

C209 2003-2009 CLK

W210 1995-2003 E

W211 2002-2009 E

W212 2009- E

C215 1999-2006 CL

C216 2006- CL

C218 2010- CLS Coupé

X218 2010- CLS Shooting Brake

C219 2004-2010 CLS

W220 1998-2005 S

W221 2005-2013 S

W222 2013- S

R230 2001-2011 SL

R231 2011- SL

W240 2002-2013 Maybach

W245 2005-2011 B

W246 2011- B

W251 2005- R

W252 coming soon R

C297 1997 CLK-GTR

303 L 4500, L 5000, L 5500

304 L 6600

309 1967-1986 T2 (old)

310 1967-1986 T2 (old)

311 L 3500

312 L 4500

313 1967-1986 T2 (old)

315

319 1956-1968 L319 / L319D

321 L911

322 L1113

323 L710

325

326

327 L1413

328 L911

329 L1518

331

332

333

334

335 L1620

336 L1920

337

338 L1418

346 L1624, L1924

349 L1618

366 L2023

401 1953-1956 Unimog U25

402 1953-1956 Unimog U25

403 1966-1988 Unimog U54, U66, U72, U800

404 1956-1980 Unimog U82, U110 (Unimog S)

405 2000- Unimog U300, U400, U500

406 1963-1986 Unimog U65, U70, U80, U84, U900

407 1988-1993 Unimog U600, U650

408 1992-2001 Unimog U90, U100

409 1996-1998 Unimog UX100

411 1956-1971 Unimog U34, U36

413 1969-1988 Unimog U80, U800

414 2002-2005 Vaneo

415 2012- Citan

416 1965-1989 Unimog U80, U90, U100, U110, U125, U1100

417 1988-1993 Unimog U 800, U900, U1100, U1150

418 1992-1998 Unimog U110, U140

421 1966-1989 Unimog U40, U45, U52, U60, U600

424 1976-1989 Unimog U1000, U1200, U1250, U1550

425 1975-1990 Unimog U1300, U1500

427 1988-2002 Unimog U1000, U1200, U1250, U1400, U1450, U1600, U1650

435 1975-1990 Unimog U1300, U1700

437 1988-2002 Unimog U1350, U1550, U1700, U1750, U2100, U2150, U2400, U2450

437.4 2002- Unimog U3000, U4000, U5000

440 1973-1991 MB-Trac 65/70, 700, 800, 900

441 1982-1991 MB-Trac 1000

442 1976-1991 MB-Trac 1100

443 1976-1991 MB-Trac 1300, 1400, 1500, 1600, 1800

450 1998–2007 Smart Fortwo

451 2007– Smart Fortwo

452 2003-2005 Smart Roadster

454 2004-2006 Smart Forfour

460 1979-1991 G

461 1979- G

462 G

463 1990- G

601 1977-1985 T1

602 1977-1985 T1

611 1977-1985 T1

631 1981-1995 MB100

638 1996-2003 Vito

639 2003- Vito

661 1999-2004 MB140

667 1986-1996 T2 (new)

668 1986-1996 T2 (new)

669 1986-1996 T2 (new)

670 1986-1996 T2 (new)

670 1996- Vario

901 1995-2006 T1N Sprinter

902 1995-2006 T1N Sprinter

903 1995-2006 T1N Sprinter

904 1995-2006 T1N Sprinter

905 1995-2006 T1N Sprinter

906 2006- NCV3 Sprinter II

930-934 Actros MP2, MP3

944 Axor

950-954 Actros

949 Zetros

957 Econic

963 Actros MP4, Antos

970-976 Atego

Joint ventures

Maybach 62 shown here, an ultra-luxury brand launched by Mercedes-Benz in 1997.

MB-combination vehicles (such as joint-ventures)

• Mercedes-AMG (typically specialized AMG versions of MB vehicles)
• Maybach (ultra-luxury brand since 1997)
• McLaren (produced joint venture supercar)

Corporate history and related bushinesses

• DaimlerChrysler (1998-2006 Daimler and Chrysler were combined and resulted in many vehicles)
• MTU Friedrichshafen, aka Maybach Motorenbau (Purchased by Daimler-Benz in 1960)
• Benz Söhne (1906-1926)
• Unimog Daimler-Benz took over in 1950?

Tuners

some examples

• Brabus
• Kleemann
• Wald

Mercedes-Benz A-Class (compact)

Mercedes B-Class (Tourer)

Mercedes-Benz C-Class (D-segment)

Mercedes-Benz E-Class (Executive car)

Mercedes-Benz S-Class (luxury sedan)

Mercedes-Benz SL-Class (Grand Tourer)

Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG (supercar)

Mercedes-Benz M-Class (luxury SUV)

Current model range

Mercedes-Benz offers a full range of passenger, light commercial and heavy commercial equipment. Vehicles are manufactured in multiple countries worldwide. The Smartmarque of city cars are also produced by Daimler AG.

• A-Class – Hatchback
• B-Class – Multi Purpose Vehicle (MPV)
• C-Class – Saloon, Estate, Coupé and Cabriolet
• CLA-Class – 4 Door Coupé and Estate
• CLS-Class – 4 Door Coupé and Estate
• E-Class – Saloon, Estate, Coupé and Cabriolet
• G-Class – Sports Utility Vehicle (SUV)
• GLA-Class – Compact Sports Utility Vehicle (SUV)/ Crossover
• GLC-Class – Sports Utility Vehicle (SUV)
• GLE-Class – Sports Utility Vehicle (SUV)
• GLS-Class – Large Sports Utility Vehicle (SUV)
• S-Class – Luxury Saloon, Coupé & Cabriolet
• SL-Class – Grand Tourer
• SLC-Class – Roadster
• V-Class – Multi Purpose Vehicle (MPV)/ Van
• AMG GT – Sports car/ Supercar

Vans

Mercedes-Benz Sprinter

Mercedes-Benz produces a range of vans; Citan (a rebadged version of the Renault Kangoo), Vito and Sprinter.

Trucks

See also: List of Mercedes-Benz trucks

Mercedes-Benz Zetros used for snowplowing

Unimog, a famous allround vehicle by Mercedes-Benz

Mercedes-Benz Trucks is now part of the Daimler Trucks division, and includes companies that were part of the DaimlerChrysler merger. Gottlieb Daimler sold the world’s first truck in 1886. The first factory to be built outside Germany after WWII was in Argentina. It originally built trucks, many of which were modified independently to buses, popularly named Colectivo. Today, it builds buses, trucks and the Sprinter van.

Buses

buses-and-coaches-mercedes-benz-mannheim-germany-since-1895

Main article: Mercedes-Benz buses

Mercedes-Benz produces a wide range of buses and coaches, mainly for Europe and Asia. The first model was produced by Karl Benz in 1895.

Significant models produced

1928: SSK racing car1930: 770 “Großer Mercedes” state and ceremonial carMercedes Benz 500K 1934: 500 K  1936: 260 D World’s first diesel production car1936: 1701938: W195 Speed Record-breaker1939: 320A A military vehicle1951: 300, known as the “Adenauer Mercedes”1953: “Ponton” models1954: 300SL “Gullwing”1956: 190SL1959: “Fintail” models1960: 220SE Cabriolet1963: 600 “Grand Mercedes”1963: 230SL “Pagoda”1965: S-Class1966:  6.31968: W114 “new generation” compact cars                                          1969: C111 experimental vehicle1972: W107 350SL

                                1974: 450SEL 6.91977: W123– Mercedes’ first station wagon1978: 300SD – Mercedes’ first turbo diesel                    1979: 500SEL and G-Class1983: 190E 2.3–161989: 300SL, 500SL1990: 500E1991: 600SEL1993: C-Class1995: C43 AMG1995: SL73 AMG, 7.3 V121996: SLK1997: A-Class and M-Class2004: SLR McLaren and CLS-Class

Mercedes-Benz E 300 BlueTEC 2007: BlueTec E320, GL320 Bluetec, ML320 Bluetec, R320 Bluetec

2010: SLS AMG

2013: CLA-Class

The Mercedes-Benz 600 or 600S Pullman Guard limousines offer the option of armour-plating and have been used by diplomats worldwide.

Car nomenclature

Until 1994, Mercedes-Benz utilized an alphanumeric system for categorizing their vehicles, consisting of a number sequence approximately equal to the engine’s displacement in liters multiplied by 100, followed by an arrangement of alphabetical suffixes indicating body style and engine type.

• “C” indicates a coupe or cabriolet body style (for example, the CL and CLK models, though the C-Class is an exception, since it is also available as a sedan or station wagon).
• “D” indicates the vehicle is equipped with a diesel engine.
• “E” (for “Einspritzung”) indicates the vehicle’s engine is equipped with petrol fuel injection. In most cases (the 600 limousine and Mercedes E-Class being the exceptions), if neither “E” or “D” is present, the vehicle has a petrol engine with a carburettor.
• “G” was originally used for the Geländewagen off-road vehicle, but is now applied to Mercedes SUVs in general (for example, the GLA and GLK).
• “K” was used in the 1930s, indicating a supercharger (“Kompressor”) equipped engine. Two exceptions : the SSK and CLK, where K indicates “Kurz” (short-wheelbase).
• “L” indicates “Leicht” (lightweight) for sporting models, and “Lang” (long-wheelbase) for sedan models.
• “R” indicates “Rennen” (racing), used for racing cars (for example, the 300SLR).
• “S” Sonderklasse “Special class” for flagship models, including the S-Class, and the SL-Class, SLR McLaren and SLS sportscars.
• “T” indicates “Touring” and an estate (or station wagon) body style.

Some models in the 1950s also had lower-case letters (b, c, and d) to indicate specific trim levels. For other models, the numeric part of the designation does not match the engine displacement. This was done to show the model’s position in the model range independent of displacement or in the price matrix. For these vehicles, the actual displacement in liters is suffixed to the model designation. An exception was the 190-class with the numeric designation of “190” as to denote its entry level in the model along with the displacement label on the right side of the boot (190E 2.3 for 2.3-litre 4-cylinder petrol motor, 190D 2.5 for 2.5-litre 5-cylinder diesel motor, and so forth). Some older models (such as the SS and SSK) did not have a number as part of the designation at all.

For the 1994 model year, Mercedes-Benz revised the naming system. Models were divided into “classes” denoted by an arrangement of up to three letters (see “Current model range” above), followed by a three-digit (or two-digit for AMG models, with the number approximately equal to the displacement in litres multiplied by 10) number related to the engine displacement as before. Variants of the same model such as an estate version or a vehicle with a diesel engine are no longer given a separate letter. The SLR, SLS and GT supercars do not carry a numerical designation.

Today, many numerical designations no longer reflect the engine’s actual displacement but more of the relative performance and marketing position. Despite its engine displacement in two litres, the powerplant in the A45 AMG produces 355 brake horsepower so the designation is higher as to indicate the greater performance. Another example is the E250 CGI having greater performance than the E200 CGI due to the different engine tuning even though both have 1.8-litre engines. From the marketing perspective, E200 seems more “upscale” than E180. Recent AMG models use the “63” designation (in honor of the 1960s 6.3-litre M100 engine) despite being equipped with either a 6.2-litre (M156) or 5.5-litre (M157) engine.

Some models carry further designations indicating special features:

• “4MATIC” indicates the vehicle is equipped with all-wheel-drive.
• “BlueTEC” indicates a diesel engine with selective catalytic reduction exhaust aftertreatment.
• “BlueEFFICIENCY” indicates special fuel economy features (direct injection, start-stop system, aerodynamic modifications, etc.)
• “CGI” (Charged Gasoline Injection) indicates direct gasoline injection.
• “CDI” (Common-rail Direct Injection) indicates a common-rail diesel engine.
• “Hybrid” indicates a petrol- or diesel-electric hybrid.
• “NGT” indicates a natural gas-fueled engine.
• “Kompressor” indicates a supercharged engine.
• “Turbo” indicates a turbocharged engine, only used on A-, B-,E- and GLK-Class models.
• “AMG Line” indicates the interior or engine, depending which car, has been fitted with the luxuries of their AMG sports cars

Model designation badges can be deleted at the request of the customer.

2015 and beyond

Rationalisation of the model nomenclature was announced in November 2014 for future models. The changes consolidate many confusing nomenclature and their placements in the model range such as CL-Class is now called the S-Class Coupé. The naming structure is divided into four categories: core, off-road vehicle/SUV, 4-door coupé, and roadster. AMG GT, and V-Class are unaffected by the change.Note: The CLA is positioned between the A- and B-Class models, while the CLS sits between the E- and S-Classes.

In addition to the revised nomenclature, Mercedes-Benz has new nomenclature for the drive systems.The revised A45 AMG for 2016 model year on has shifted the model designation to the right side while AMG is on the left side. This trend commenced with Mercedes-Maybach with MAYBACH on the left and S500/S600 on the right.

Environmental record

Mercedes-Benz has developed multi concept cars with alternative propulsion, such as hybrid-electric, fully electric, and fuel-cell powertrains. At the 2007 Frankfurt motor show, Mercedes-Benz showed seven hybrid models, including the F700 concept car, powered by a hybrid-electric drivetrain featuring the DiesOtto engine. In 2009, Mercedes-Benz displayed three BlueZERO concepts at the North American International Auto Show. Each car features a different powertrain – battery-electric, fuel-cell electric, and gasoline-electric hybrid. In the same year, Mercedes also showed the Vision S500 PHEV concept with a 19 miles (31 km) all-electric range and CO₂ emissions of 74 grams/km in the New European Driving Cycle.

Since 2002, Mercedes-Benz has developed the F-Cell fuel cell vehicle. The current version, based on the B-Class, has a 250-mile range and is available for lease, with volume production scheduled to begin in 2014. Mercedes has also announced the SLS AMG E-Cell, a fully electric version of the SLS sports car, with deliveries expected in 2013. The Mercedes-Benz S400 BlueHYBRID was launched in 2009, and is the first production automotive hybrid in the world to use a lithium-ion battery. In mid-2010, production commenced on the Vito E-Cell all-electric van. Mercedes expects 100 vehicles to be produced by the end of 2010 and a further 2000 by the end of 2011.

In 2008, Mercedes-Benz announced that it would have a demonstration fleet of small electric cars in two to three years. Mercedes-Benz and Smart are preparing for the widespread uptake of electric vehicles (EVs) in the UK by beginning the installation of recharging points across their dealer networks. So far 20 Elektrobay recharging units, produced in the UK by Brighton-based Elektromotive, have been installed at seven locations as part of a pilot project, and further expansion of the initiative is planned later in 2010.

In the United States, Mercedes-Benz was assessed a record US$30.66 million fine for their decision to not meet the federal corporate average fuel economy standard in 2009. Certain Mercedes-Benz cars, including the S550 and all AMG models sold in the United States, also face an additional gas guzzler tax. However, newer AMG models fitted with the M157 engine will not be subject to the gas-guzzler tax, due to improved fuel economy, and newer models powered by the M276 and M278 engines will have better fuel economy. In 2008, Mercedes also had the worst CO₂ average of all major European manufacturers, ranking 14th out of 14 manufacturers. Mercedes was also the worst manufacturer in 2007 and 2006 in terms of average CO₂ levels, with 181 g and 188 g of CO₂ emitted per km, respectively.

Bicycles

Mercedes-Benz Accessories GmbH introduced three new bicycles in 2005, and the range has developed to include the patent pending Foldingbike in 2007. Other models include the Mercedes-Benz Carbon Bike, Trekking Bike, Fitness Bike and the Trailblazer Bike.

Motorsport

Main article: Mercedes-Benz in motorsport

A DMG Mercedes Simplex 1906 in the Deutsches Museum

The two companies which were merged to form the Mercedes-Benz brand in 1926 had both already enjoyed success in the new sport of motor racing throughout their separate histories. A single Benz competed in the world’s first motor race, the 1894 Paris–Rouen, where Émile Roger finished 14th in 10 hours 1 minute. Throughout its long history, the company has been involved in a range of motorsport activities, including sports car racing and rallying. On several occasions Mercedes-Benz has withdrawn completely from motorsport for a significant period, notably in the late 1930s, and after the 1955 Le Mans disaster, where a Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR rammed another car (An Austin-Healey), took off into the stands, and killed more than 80 spectators. Stirling Moss and co-driver Denis Jenkinson made history by winning the 1955 Mille Miglia road race in Italy during a record-breaking drive with an average speed of almost 98 mph in a Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR.

Although there was some activity in the intervening years, it was not until 1987 that Mercedes-Benz returned to front line competition, returning to Le Mans, Deutsche Tourenwagen Meisterschaft (DTM), and Formula One with Sauber. The 1990s saw Mercedes-Benz purchase British engine builder Ilmor (now Mercedes-Benz High Performance Engines), and campaign IndyCars under the USAC/CART rules, eventually winning the 1994 Indianapolis 500 and 1994 CART IndyCar World Series Championship with Al Unser, Jr. at the wheel. The 1990s also saw the return of Mercedes-Benz to GT racing, and the Mercedes-Benz CLK GTR, both of which took the company to new heights by dominating the FIA’s GT1 class.

Mercedes-Benz is currently active in three forms of motorsport, Formula Three, DTM and Formula One.

Formula One

 The Mercedes-Benz Formula One team at the 2013 Malaysian Grand Prix.

Main article: Mercedes-Benz in Formula One

Mercedes-Benz took part in the world championship in 1954 and 1955, but despite being successful with two championship titles for Juan-Manuel Fangio, the company left the sport after just two seasons. Fangio is considered by many to be the best F1 driver in history.

Mercedes-Benz returned as an engine supplier in the 1990s and part-owned Team McLaren for some years, to which it has supplied engines engineered by Ilmor since 1995. This partnership brought success, including drivers championships for Mika Häkkinen in 1998 and 1999, and for Lewis Hamilton in 2008, as well as a constructors championship in 1998. The collaboration with McLaren had been extended into the production of roadgoing cars such as the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren.

In 2007, McLaren-Mercedes was fined a record US$100 million for stealing confidential Ferrari technical data.

In 2009, Ross Brawn‘s newly conceived Formula One team, Brawn GP used Mercedes engines to help win the constructor’s championship, and Jenson Button to become champion in the F1 drivers’ championship. At the end of the season, Mercedes-Benz sold its 40% stake in McLaren to the McLaren Group and bought 70% of the Brawn GP team jointly with an Abu Dhabi-based investment consortium. Brawn GP was renamed Mercedes GP for the 2010 season and is, from this season on, a works team for Mercedes-Benz. As of 2015, the company currently provides engines to the Williams F1 Team, Sahara Force India F1 Team and the Lotus F1 Team.

In 2014, Mercedes clinched its first F1 Constructor’s title with drivers Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg with 3 races to go, after dominating much of the season. Mercedes repeated its dominance in 2015 in similar fashion, losing only 3 races out of 19 once again.

Logo history

 

• 

  1902-1909

• 

  1909-1916

• 

  1916-1926

• 

  1926-current

• 

  1980-current

• 

  1990-current

Noted employees

• Paul Bracq – major designer of automobiles in the 20th century
• Béla Barényi – car safety pioneer (rigid passenger safety shell), joined Daimler-Benz in 1937
• Wilhelm Maybach – automotive pioneer, first met Gottlieb Daimler in 1865
• Ferdinand Porsche – founder of Porsche, joined Mercedes in 1923 and developed the Kompressor
• Bruno Sacco – joined Daimler-Benz as a designer in 1958. Head of Design in 1975, retired in 1999
• Rudolf Uhlenhaut – joined Daimler-Benz in 1931, his designs included the Silver Arrows, the 300 SL and 300SLR
• Adolf Eichmann – former Nazi criminal. Worked in Argentina’s factory after WWII^[75]
• Rudolf Caracciola – one of the greatest GP drivers in history drove MB Silver Arrows in competition.Josef Ganz – Technical consultant and “Godfather” of the *Mercedes-Benz W136, with the revolutionary Independent suspension, Swing axle layout.

Innovations

Numerous technological innovations have been introduced on Mercedes-Benz automobiles throughout the many years of their production, including:

• The internal combustion engine automobile was developed independently by Benz and Daimler & Maybach in 1886
• Daimler invented the honeycomb radiator of the type still used on all water-cooled vehicles today
• Daimler invented the float carburetor which was used until replaced by fuel injection
• The “drop chassis” – the car originally designated the “Mercedes” by Daimler was also the first car with a modern configuration, having the carriage lowered and set between the front and rear wheels, with a front engine and powered rear wheels. All earlier cars were “horseless carriages”, which had high centres of gravity and various engine/drive-train configurations
• The first passenger road car to have brakes on all four wheels (1924)1938 (1936-40) Mercedes Benz 260D W138                                                                                  In 1936, the Mercedes-Benz 260 D was the first diesel powered passenger car.Mercedes-Benz were the first to offer direct fuel injection on the (1955)Mercedes-Benz 300SL Gullwing
• The “safety cage” or “safety cell” construction with front and rear crumple zones was first developed by Mercedes-Benz in 1951. This is considered by many as the most important innovation in automobile construction from a safety standpoint
• In 1959, Mercedes-Benz patented a device that prevents drive wheels from spinning by intervening at the engine, transmission, or brakes. In 1987, Mercedes-Benz applied its patent by introducing a traction control system that worked under both braking and acceleration
• an Anti-Lock Brake system (ABS) was first offered on the W116 450SEL 6.9. They became standard on the W126 S-Class starting production in 1979 and first sold in most markets in 1980.
• Airbags were first introduced in the European market, beginning with model year 1981 S-Class.
• Mercedes-Benz was the first to introduce pre-tensioners to seat belts on the 1981 S-Class. In the event of a crash, a pre-tensioner will tighten the belt instantaneously, removing any ‘slack’ in the belt, which prevents the occupant from jerking forward in a crash
• In September 2003, Mercedes-Benz introduced the world’s first seven-speed automatic transmission called ‘7G-Tronic‘
• Electronic Stability Programme (ESP), brake assist, and many other types of safety equipment were all developed, tested, and implemented into passenger cars – first – by Mercedes-Benz. Mercedes-Benz has not made a large fuss about its innovations, and has even licensed them for use by competitors – in the name of improving automobile and passenger safety. As a result, crumple zones and anti-lock brakes (ABS) are now standard on all modern vehicles.

Mercedes M156 engine

• The (W211) E320 CDI which has a variable geometry turbocharger (VGT) 3.0-litre V6common rail diesel engine (producing 224 hp or 167 kW), set three world endurance records. It covered 100,000 miles (160,000 km) in a record time, with an average speed of 224.823 km/h (139.70 mph). Three identical cars did the endurance run (one set above record) and the other two cars set world records for time taken to cover 100,000 kilometres (62,137 mi) and 50,000 miles (80,000 km) respectively. After all three cars had completed the run, their combined distance was 300,000 miles (480,000 km) (all records were FIA approved).
• Mercedes-Benz pioneered a system called Pre-Safe to detect an imminent crash – and prepares the car’s safety systems to respond optimally. It also calculates the optimal braking force required to avoid an accident in emergency situations, and makes it immediately available for when the driver depresses the brake pedal. Occupants are also prepared by tightening the seat belt, closing the sunroof and windows, and moving the seats into the optimal position.
• At 181 horsepower per litre, the M133 engine installed in Mercedes-Benz A45 AMG is the most powerful series production four-cylinder turbocharged motor (as of June 2013) and has one of the highest power density for a passenger vehicle.

Half a century of vehicle safety innovation helped win Mercedes-Benz the Safety Award at the 2007 What Car? Awards.

Robot cars

Main article: Driverless car

In the 1980s, Mercedes built the world’s first robot car, together with the team of Professor Ernst Dickmanns at Bundeswehr University Munich. Partially encouraged by Dickmanns’ success, in 1987 the European Union’s EUREKA programme initiated the Prometheus Project on autonomous vehicles, funded to the tune of nearly €800 million. A culmination point was achieved in 1995, when Dickmanns’ re-engineered autonomous S-Class Mercedes took a long trip from Munich in Bavaria to Copenhagen in Denmark, and back. On highways, the robot achieved speeds exceeding 175 km/h (109 mph) (permissible in some areas of the German Autobahn). The car’s abilities has heavily influenced robot car research and funding decisions worldwide.

As for the future of Mercedes-Benz Robot Cars, in October 2015, the company introduced the Vision Tokyo, a five-seat electric van powered by a hybrid hydrogen fuel-cell systerm. The super-sleek van is touted as “a chill-out zone in the midst of megacity traffic mayhem.”

Tuners

Several companies have become car tuners (or modifiers) of Mercedes Benz, in order to increase performance and/or luxury to a given model.

AMG is Mercedes-Benz’s in-house performance-tuning division, specialising in high-performance versions of most Mercedes-Benz cars. AMG engines are all hand-built, and each completed engine receives a tag with the signature of the engineer who built it. AMG has been wholly owned by Mercedes-Benz since 1999.

The 2009 SLS AMG, a revival of the 300SL Gullwing, is the first car to be entirely developed by AMG.

There are numerous independent tuners including Brabus, Carlsson, Kleemann and Renntech.

Sponsorships

 Mercedes-Benz is sponsoring the German national football team.

In football, Mercedes-Benz sponsors Germany National Football Team. Mercedes-Benz sponsors Bundesliga club VfB Stuttgart and provides the naming rights for their stadium, the Mercedes-Benz Arena. The company also holds the naming rights to the Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans, Louisiana. On August 24, 2015, Mercedes-Benz was announced as the naming rights sponsor for the Atlanta Falcons‘ new home Mercedes-Benz Stadium, scheduled to open in 2017.

• Bertha Benz
• Mercedes-Benz AMG

 

RENAULT Buses, Cars and Trucks France Part VI Modern Era 1972-1980

RENAULT

Buses, Cars and Trucks France

Part VI – Modern era (1972–1980)

The company’s compact and economical Renault 5 model, launched in January 1972, was another success, particularly in the wake of the 1973 energy crisis. Throughout the 1970s the R4, R5, R6, R12, R15, R16 and R17 maintained Renault’s production with further new models launches including the Renault 18 and Renault 20.

1972

Endangered like all of the motor industry by the energy crisis, during the mid seventies the already expansive company diversified further into other industries and continued to expand globally, including into South East Asia. The energy crisis also provoked Renault’s attempt to reconquer the North American market; despite the Dauphine’s success in the United States in the late 1950s, and an unsuccessful car-assembly project in Saint-Bruno-de-Montarville, Quebec, (1964–72), Renault as a stand-alone brand, began to disappear from North America at the end of the 1970s.

1973

Throughout the decades Renault developed a collaborative partnership with Nash Motors Rambler and its successor American Motors Corporation (AMC). From 1962 to 1967, Renault assembled complete knock down (CKD) kits of the Rambler Classic sedans in its factory in Belgium. Renault did not have large or luxury cars in its product line and the “Rambler Renault” would be aimed as an alternative to the Mercedes-Benz “Fintail” cars. Later, Renault would continue to make and sell a hybrid of AMC’s Rambler American and Rambler Classic called the Renault Torino in Argentina (sold through IKA-Renault). Renault partnered with AMC on other projects, such as development of a rotary concept engine in the late 1960s.

Renault 5 Turbo

This was one of a series of collaborative ventures undertaken by Renault in the late 1960s and 1970s, as the company established subsidiaries in Eastern Europe, most notably Dacia in Romania, and South America (many of which remain active to the present day) and forged technological cooperation agreements with Volvo and Peugeot, the latter signed in 1966 (for instance, for the development of the PRV V6 engine, which was used in Renault 30, Peugeot 604, and Volvo 260 in the late 1970s).

1974

In the mid-1960s an Australian arm, Renault Australia, was set up in Heidelberg, Melbourne, the company would produce and assemble models from the R8, R10, R12, R16, sporty R15, R17 coupe’s to the R18 and R20, soon the company would close in 1981. Renault Australia did not just concentrate on Renaults, they also built and marketed Peugeots as well. From 1977, they assembled Ford Cortina station wagons under contract- the loss of this contract led to the closure of the factory.

1974 Renault 15 coupe

When Peugeot acquired Citroën and formed PSA, the group’s collaboration with Renault was reduced, although already established joint production projects were maintained. As part of Citroën reorganisation prior to its merging with Peugeot, Renault purchased from them the truck and bus manufacturer Berliet in 1975, merging it with its subsidiary Saviem in 1978 to create Renault Véhicules Industriels, which became the only French manufacturer of heavy commercial vehicles. In 1976, Renault reorganised the company into four business areas which were automobiles (for car and light commercial vehicles or LCVs), finance and services, commercial vehicles (coaches and trucks over 2.5 tons GVW), and other minor operations under an industrial enterprises division (farm machinery, plastics, foundry, etc.). In 1980, Renault produced 2,053,677 cars and LCVs (the cars at the time were the Renault 4, 5, 6, 7, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20 and 30; the LCVs were the 4, 5 and 12 Société and the Estafette), and 54,086 buses/coaches and trucks.

1975

In North America, Renault formed a partnership with American Motors, lending AMC operating capital and buying a minority 22.5% stake in the company in late 1979. The first Renault model sold through AMC’s dealerships was the R5, renamed Renault Le Car. Jeep was keeping AMC afloat until new products, particularly the XJ Cherokee, could be launched. When the bottom fell out of the 4×4 truck market in early 1980 AMC was in danger of going bankrupt. To protect its investment, Renault bailed AMC out with a big cash influx – at the price of a controlling interest in the company of 47.5%. Renault quickly replaced some top AMC executives with their own people.

1976

The Renault–AMC partnership also resulted in the marketing of Jeep vehicles in Europe. Some consider the Jeep XJ Cherokee as a joint AMC/Renault project since some early sketches of the XJ series were made in collaboration by Renault and AMC engineers (AMC insisted that the XJ Cherokee was designed by AMC personnel; however, a former Renault engineer designed the Quadra-Link front suspension for the XJ series). The Jeep also used wheels and seats from Renault. Part of AMC’s overall strategy when the partnership was first discussed was to save manufacturing cost by using Renault sourced parts when practical, and some engineering expertise. This led to the improvement of the venerable AMC in-line six – a Renault/Bendix-based port electronic fuel injection system (usually called Renix) that transformed it into a modern, competitive powerplant with a jump from 110 hp (82 kW) to 177 hp (132 kW) with less displacement (from 4.2L to 4.0L).

1977

The Renault-AMC marketing effort in passenger cars was not as successful compared to the popularity for Jeep vehicles. This was because by the time the Renault range was ready to become established in the American market, the second energy crisis was over, taking with it much of the trend for economical, compact cars. One exception was the Renault Alliance (an Americanised version of the Renault 9), which debuted for the 1983 model year. Assembled at AMC’s plant in Kenosha, Wisconsin, the Alliance received Motor Trend‘s domestic Car of The Year award in 1983. The Alliance’s 72% U.S. content allowed it to qualify as a domestic vehicle, making it the first car with a foreign nameplate to win the award since the magazine established a separate Import Car of The Year prize in 1976. (In 2000, Motor Trend did away with separate awards for domestic and imported vehicles.)

1978

Renault sold some interesting models in the U.S. in the 1980s, especially the simple-looking but fun Renault Alliance GTA and GTA convertible – an automatic-top convertible with a 2.0 L engine – big for a car of its class; and the ahead-of-its-time Renault Fuego coupe. The Alliance was followed by the Encore (U.S. version of the Renault 11), an Alliance-based hatchback. In 1982 Renault become the second European automaker to build cars in the United States, after Volkswagen. However, Renault’s Wisconsin-built and imported models quickly became the target of customer complaints for poor quality, and sales plummeted.

1979

Eventually, Renault sold AMC to Chrysler in 1987 after the assassination of Renault’s chairman, Georges Besse. The Renault Medallion (Renault 21 in Europe) sedan and wagon was sold from 1987 to 1989 through Jeep-Eagle dealerships. Jeep-Eagle was the new division Chrysler created out of the former American Motors. However, Renault products were no longer imported into the United States after 1989. A completely new full-sized 4-door sedan, the Eagle Premier, was developed during the partnership between AMC and Renault. The Premier design, as well as its state-of-the-art manufacturing facility in Bramalea, Ontario, Canada, were the starting point for the sleek LH sedans such as the Eagle Vision and Chrysler 300M.

In early 1979, as part of its attempts to expand into the American market, Renault bought a 20% minority stake in the truck manufacturer Mack Trucks. The aim of this operation was to make use of the extensive dealership network of the company to distribute light trucks. In 1983, Renault increased its stake in Mack Trucks to 44.6%. In 1987, it transferred the ownership of a 42% stake to Renault Véhicules Industriels.

1980

In the late seventies and early eighties Renault increased its involvement in motorsport, with novel inventions such as turbochargers in their Formula One cars. Renault’s head of engines, Georges Douin, orchestrated the installation of turbocharged engines across much of the Renault range beginning in 1980. 10% of all turbocharged cars built in Europe in 1984 were Renaults. The company’s road car designs were revolutionary in other ways also – the Renault Espace was one of the first minivans and was to remain the most well-known minivan in Europe for at least the next two decades. The second-generation Renault 5, the European Car of the Year-winning Renault 9, and the most luxurious Renault yet, the aerodynamic 25 were all released in the early 1980s, building Renault’s reputation, but at the same time the company suffered from poor product quality which reflected badly in the image of the brand and the ill-fated Renault 14 is seen by many as the culmination of these problems in the early 1980s.

Part VII – Restructuring (1981–1995)