VIDEO: Audi Finds Last Horch

What is a Horch, you might say?  I always enjoy reading about the lineage and history of automotive brands, so I found Audi's search for the last Horch, chronicled in a video, to be very interesting. Horch is a company that is integral to the history of Audi, and a story that began all the way back in November 14th, 1899. Thats when the original company, A. Horch & Cie. Motorwagen-Werke AG, was founded by August Horch.

Later on, disputes with the supervisory board (called the Board of Directors in the United States) caused August Horch to leave the company, founding another of his own named Horch Automobil-Werke GmbH, on July 16th, 1909.

There was an ensuing dispute between him and the old company over the Horch name, forcing him to change it. That resulted in him renaming it Audi, which is the Latin translation of the German word Horch. As such, the new company, Audiwerke GmbH, was formed on April 25th, 1910.

On June 29th 1932, twenty two years later, four German companies joined together to create Auto Union.  The four brands were Audi, DKW, Horch (the original company) and Wanderer. As you can see,  Horch is very much intertwined in with Audi's history. The last Horch was built by hand in Ingolstadt in 1953, and then "disappeared" four years later after being bought by an American solider who brought it over to the United States.

To retrieve the vehicle, Audi sent their man assigned to purchasing historic Audi vehicles, Ralph Hornung, to come and get the vehicle in Texas - far from its original home in Germany. The search for the car is chronicled in this video below - which is a very interesting watch to say the least. It is amazing that they were able to find the car in such a relatively good condition!

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJq76WzSExs