In record time Audi became the second-most winning marque ever at Le Mans which indeed does indicate some sort of advantage. Their true stroke of genius must be their company slogan though – which is so masterfully simple and telling that it has proved impossible to better it. Audi has tried, but has always come back to “Vorsprung Durch Technik”.
Now, regarding the Le Mans statistics: They are indeed impressive as that first victory came only in 2000. The last of their 13 victories was achieved using diesel fuel (or some substance vaguely resembling it) and should in my opinion not count towards anything other than the true diesel scandal – erhm, but that’s another theme, really.
At least they have some amazing Marketing and PR people in that group, and they had that even back in 1969. Apparently that was the year a young man within Audi’s own marketing department found the three words that for many years have been Audi’s slogan. Hans Bauer had simply thought about the complexity of Audi’s model program, and as it ranged widely and several of the models were leaders in their classes, he found the “Vorsprung Durch Technik” appropriate.
A wide model range? Wasn’t Audi quite small in 1969? Yes, indeed they were, but in 1969 they merged with NSU, which suddenly gave the company both Wankel engines, air-cooling, semi-automatics, aerodynamics and even rear-engined cars in the lineup – and the new Audi 80 was ready in the shadows, waiting to increase Audi’s own sales figures tremendously. The new company was called “Audi NSU Auto Union AG”, and that name’s lack of wordiness was thus revenged in the quite simple slogan.
“Vorsprung Durch Technik” was first used publicly around 1972 when the Audi 80 was presented in Ingolstadt. At the time of the exhibition in 1972 “Audi NSU” stood in front of the three words, and it was not until 1985 that the company changed its name to the current Audi AG – a name as simple as the slogan.
There has, of course, been messed around with the brilliant slogan along the way: Around 1975, someone persuaded Audi that “Audi. Ein schönes Stück Technik” was better – and later, even greater persuasion skills must have been put to work in place to waste millions on introducing the gumpy “Audi. Gelassen fahren mit perfekter Technik”. When the Audi quattro emerged in 1980, it had become apparant for Audi that they better had stick to developing cars rather than slogans, and they – more or less consistently – reverted to the original formulation.
Which IS really good, that slogan. So strong that it is in quite a few countries actually not translated at all but just used in its original form. That is relatively easy if one’s slogan is “just do it” or something along those lines and language, but in German? It really has not been seen quite often, but even British and French people know Audi’s German slogan – mostly with a thick accent which of course isn’t really any fault of the Germans. Anyway it is a superb performance of the forty year old slogan.
In America they don’t seem to have the same language ears as we on the continent, so of course they have tried with an anglofication (if you can say that about Americans trying to word something in proper English): “Innovation through technology” is also sort of a bit there, but misses the focus on the result of the use of technology that the original slogan lacks. So does the latest version for the US market that I know of: “Truth in Engineering” is close to nonsense.
But then again: Maybe it does indeed mean something, the latest American version? I’ve always liked the original slogan for mostly the above mentioned reasons – but apart from aerodynamics, four-wheel drive, galvanizing and some use of aluminum, I’ve never really bought the claim: Since the slogan was born Audi has not, to my best belief, shown a great leap over other successful manufacturers.
What they have shown is tremendous persistence, exactly as in their slogan and exactly as they did at Le Mans. This alone deserves great respect. There are none of their new cars that I would like to own (which applies to other manufacturers as well, so Audi can’t really be blamed for that), but there are some of their older ones, and several of them I’ve written about before: First and foremost the NSU Ro80 (discussion: Is that really an Audi at all?), but also the Audi 100 Coupé, the A2, quattro, V8, NSU TT and even Prinz.
Note that there is a diesel car in between, A2 3L: Which shows exactly where diesel has an advantage over petrol. I got myself one as I started commuting 240 kilometers per day, later 300 per day – and it was brilliant. It took about twenty years before the extraordinary fuel economy of the little aluminium fiveseater was finally rivalled. Talk about Vorsprung right there. Audi couldn’t sell them, though, and the 3L is about as rare as my Jensen Interceptor.
I think the morale is that Audi customers are happy with just the slogan, thank you.
