The name AUDI

Sir,
Your legendary knowledge of motor manufacturing history was given yet another welcome airing in the March issue when recounting the Auto-Union background for your description of the new Audi car from Germany. May I dot the “i” for you in Audi by recalling for your many veteran readers with classic interests that “audi” is Latin and “botch” is German for the word “listen!” Thus, when the new make was introduced on the German market, an immediate quality relationship was established with the accepted Horch car among the wide circles of prosperous potential car buyers with classical education likely to accept something smaller than the Horch, less garish than the Mercedes, but patriotically Gerrman-made, yet with a foreign tang in line with “Herr Doktor” titles and “englischer tweed suitings” popular in those days. An interesting exercise in brand loyalty management as seen then and revived now, but in collaboration with Mercedes, once Auto-Union’s arch-rival, not to mention Volkswagen, who would have been quite beyond the pale for any “Herr Doktor” of the days of the original Audi. O tempora, O mores. . .

London, S.E.19. V. Loupart.