On that day the German mechanical engineer August Horch moved his company A. Horch Cie. – first established in Cologne-Ehrenfeld in 1899 and subsequently continued in Reichenbach (Vogtland) from 1902 onward – to Zwickau. With the official registration of his company in the Zwickau trade registry as A. Horch & Cie. Motorwagenwerke AG, he rose to become the founding father of the Saxon automotive industry. As early as 1900, the car pioneer developed an automobile with a shockfree engine (an engine that transfers power evenly and not erratically to the drive shaft, and subsequently to the wheels) and introduced the first four-cylinder German car in 1903.

Yet August Horch did not only stand for the quality, luxury and technical progress of the Horch cars. After he left the company in 1909, he also became responsible for founding the Audi Automobilwerke GmbH that same year and brought the first Audi to market in Zwickau in 1910. The company grew to become a world leader in premium car brands in steps: first by merging with the Horch, Wanderer and DKW brands to form the Auto Union AG in 1932, then the renewed founding in 1949 as Auto Union GmbH in Ingolstadt, followed by the later merger with the NSU Motorenwerke AG in 1969 and finally, the founding of Audi AG in 1985. Audi became part of the Volkswagen Group in 1965.