The Audi Type T was a large, 6-cylinder-powered sedan/saloon car introduced by

Audi Audi AG () is a German automotive manufacturer of luxury vehicles headquartered in Ingolstadt, Bavaria, Germany. As a subsidiary of its parent company, the Volkswagen Group, Audi produces vehicles in nine production facilities worldwide. Th ...

in 1931. It was in most respects a scaled-down version of the manufacturer's Type SS "Zwickau", which had appeared two years earlier.

Jørgen Skafte Rasmussen Jørgen Skafte Rasmussen (30 July 1878 – 12 August 1964) was a Danish engineer and industrialist. Life The son of a shipmaster who died when Rasmussen was still a young child, he attended middle school in Nakskov and in 1894 began an app ...

, the Danish-born entrepreneurial industrialist who had purchased Audi-Werke in 1928, had previously, in 1927, purchased the manufacturing plant of the bankrupt

Detroit Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at t ...

-based

Rickenbacker Rickenbacker International Corporation is a string instrument manufacturer based in Santa Ana, California. The company is credited as the first known maker of electric guitars – a steel guitar in 1932 – and today produces a rang ...

business and shipped it home to Germany. He installed it in a factory he owned just outside

Zschopau Zschopau (), is a town in the Erzgebirgskreis district of Saxony, Germany. Geography The town is located on the northwestern slopes of the Ore Mountains, on both banks of the Zschopau River, about south-east from Chemnitz. The highest point ...

, near to Audi's own

Zwickau Zwickau (; is, with around 87,500 inhabitants (2020), the fourth-largest city of Saxony after Leipzig, Dresden and Chemnitz and it is the seat of the Zwickau District. The West Saxon city is situated in the valley of the Zwickau Mulde (German: ...

plant. The plan was to build large, relatively inexpensive US-style engines for sales to other German auto-makers. The plan failed in that Rasmussen failed to secure any orders for the engines, so he instead produced two models of his own which used engines produced using the Rickenbacker plant. The Audi Type T (Zwickau) was the second and smaller of these. The vehicle had a six-cylinder engine with 3,838 cc of displacement. It developed a maximum output of at 3,200 rpm, which was conveyed to the rear wheel through a four-speed manual transmission controlled using a central floor-mounted lever.

Oswald Oswald may refer to: People *Oswald (given name), including a list of people with the name *Oswald (surname), including a list of people with the name Fictional characters *Oswald the Reeve, who tells a tale in Geoffrey Chaucer's ''The Canterbur ...

, p. 45 The car had two leaf-sprung solid axles and four-wheel hydraulic brakes. It was available as four-door "Limousine" (sedan) or two-door convertible. 76 were made.

Specifications

Sources

* Oswald, Werner: Deutsche Autos 1920–1945, Motorbuch Verlag Stuttgart, 10. Auflage (1996 edition), * {{Reflist 1930s cars Type T