Initially presented early in 1933, the Audi Front UW 220 was Europe’s first car to combine front-wheel drive with a six-cylinder engine. It remained in production for slightly under two years before being replaced by the Audi Front UW 225 featuring a larger 2.25-litre engine. The larger-engined car introduced in 1935 was built till April 1938 and continued to be listed into 1939. Between 1933 and 1938, the Front was the only Audi in volume production.

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 43

The engine installation

At launch the Front UW 220 featured a straight-six-cylinder

ohv An overhead valve (OHV) engine, sometimes called a ''pushrod engine'', is a piston engine whose valves are located in the cylinder head above the combustion chamber. This contrasts with earlier flathead engines, where the valves were located bel ...

engine of 1,950 cc. Claimed maximum power output was at 3,500 rpm. The two-litre engine was shared with the

Auto Union Auto Union AG, was an amalgamation of four German automobile manufacturers, founded in 1932 and established in 1936 in Chemnitz, Saxony. It is the immediate predecessor of Audi as it is known today. As well as acting as an umbrella firm fo ...

group’s

Wanderer W22 The Wanderer W22 was an upper-middle-class six-cylinder sedan introduced by Auto Union under the Wanderer brand in 1933. It replaced the W20 8/40 PS, from which it inherited its OHV engine, developed by Ferdinand Porsche. Two years after introdu ...

introduced at the same time. The letters "UW" in the car's name stood for "Umgekehrter Wanderer" and referred to the fact that it featured a Wanderer engine that had been "umgekehrt" ''(turned around)'' through 180 degrees in order to drive wheels which, on this application, were actually ahead of the engine.

The car

In common with many performance cars of the period, the Front UW 220 provided a claimed top speed of : presumably actual performance data would have varied according to the weight and wind-cheating qualities of each individual car body. Various body styles were offered, including four-door sports limousines and two-door cabriolets / roadsters.

1935 upgrade

For the UW 225 produced from 1935, engine size was increased to 2,257 cc, and reported maximum power rose to or , respectively at 3,300 or 3,800 rpm: increased power was reflected by a modest increase in the claimed top speed to . The

engine came, again, from fellow Auto Union group member Wanderer, being shared with the Wanderer W245 and its successors. Despite the relative novelty of the front-wheel-drive configuration, the manufacturer quoted the car's turning circle as which was not greatly above the norm for cars of this size. The rear-wheel-drive Wanderer with which the Audi shared its engine featured an advertised turning circle of 12 meters.

Manufacturing arrangements

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 ...

who till 1932 owned and controlled the companies that comprised the

had acquired

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 1928, and as part of the deal had acquired their manufacturing plant at

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: ...

. However, since 1931 the Audi Zwickau plant had been producing the DKW F1, replaced in 1932 with the

DKW F2 DKW (''Dampf-Kraft-Wagen'', en, "steam-powered car", also ''Deutsche Kinder-Wagen'' en, "German children's car". ''Das-Kleine-Wunder'', en, "the little wonder" or ''Des-Knaben-Wunsch'', en, "the boy's wish"- from when the company built to ...

. The small front-wheel drive DKWs proved popular, and completely utilised the production capacity at what had hitherto been the Audi plant. The Audi Front was therefore assembled at the nearby plant of

Horch Horch () was a car brand manufacturer, founded in Germany by August Horch & Cie at the beginning of the 20th century. It is one of the predecessors of the present day Audi company, which itself resulted from the merger of Auto Union Aktienge ...

, another automaker purchased by Rasmussen in 1928, and one which, after Rasmussen's bank enforced a restructuring in 1932, became another of the four

group companies.

, pp 42 - 43

Commercial

Approximately 4,500 Audi Fronts were produced, including 1,817 of the earlier UW 220 model built between April 1933 and November 1934. By 1938 2,591 of the successor UW 225 model had been produced.

A rear wheel drive "successor"

Production of the successor model, the Audi 920, began in November 1938. The Audi 920 was designed to be built and branded as a Horch, and the last minute decision to badge it instead as an Audi was led by marketing considerations. The 920 neatly slotted into the Auto Union range between the larger and more costly Horch models and the slightly smaller cheaper cars produced by

Wanderer Wanderer, Wanderers, or The Wanderer may refer to: * Nomadism, Nomadic and/or itinerant people, working short-term before moving to other locations, who wander from place to place with no permanent home, or are vagrancy (people), vagrant * The Wan ...

. Under these circumstances, the description of the rear wheel drive 920 as a replacement for the front wheel drive Audi Front UW 225 is not unchallenged.

References

{{commons category, Audi Front Front Executive cars Auto Union Front-wheel-drive vehicles Cars introduced in 1933 1930s cars