No One Will Ever Convince Me that AUDI Can Be an Audi Sub-Brand

The four rings in the famous Audi logo represent the brands that formed Auto Union: Horch, Wanderer, DKW, and Audi. NSU eventually joined them but without the right to add another ring. That means Audi had four brands to choose from, each with an incredible legacy to restore. Why didn't it go for any of them in this new Chinese sub-brand? That would avoid so much trouble...

The only argument that comes to my mind is that Audi wants AUDI to eventually replace it. Supposing AUDI becomes a success in the world's largest market, it may absorb the main brand and replace its products in a seamless process that would leave most car buyers unaware that Audi had ever died. The situation is so ridiculous that anyone reading this text aloud, without mentioning which Audi has only capital letters in its name, could not expect anyone to understand what it was about. If Audi died, how can AUDI replace it? But it can get even worse.

Suppose AUDI is a short-lived effort that heads nowhere and goes bankrupt in a few years. How can Audi say it is in perfect shape if AUDI bites the dust in the world's largest car market? Didn't anyone in the company's marketing department realize the risk this represents? What about the CEO and all the people who approved the idea? Is it any surprise that the German brand saw a 91% operational profit decrease in Q3? If Audi's decision to name its Chinese sub-brand AUDI is a valid reference, it should not surprise anyone.

Would the decision have anything to do with the commercial battle between the European Union (EU) and China? If that were the case, Audi could have wanted to keep selling in China with a brand that is not exactly Audi, which may sound too European, so that Chinese customers could embrace it as one of their own. Supposing patriotism plays any role in car shopping, shouldn't this sub-brand have a Chinese name, then? How Chinese does AUDI sound?

No matter which angle you try to use to justify Audi's decision, AUDI still sounds like a terrible choice to christen the new Chinese sub-brand. Even the most absurd takes will not work. Would it have been a demand from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which controls SAIC, the partner Audi chose to create this sub-brand? That's very difficult to conceive. Again, if the CCP were to ask for anything in this deal, it would have been for SAIC to forget about it. After all, the Chinese government wants to consolidate its automakers, not to see new branches, divisions, and joint ventures.

It may be simpler to accept that the automotive industry has no idea what to do nowadays. Even naming a sub-brand with a name that is still in use (by its main brand) is on the cards. Audi tried to justify that by saying the decision "signals both the connection to and differentiation from the sister brand." How so? By using capital letters? By dropping the traditional logo? In the best-case scenario, people will just wonder why these AUDIs do not have the four-silver-ring logo. In the worst-case scenario, these cars will be taken as cheap and unashamed copies of the original ones, which is the opposite of Audi's goals with the new sub-brand.

If the idea with AUDI was to develop cars at a higher speed and without the bureaucratic decision-making process that made Volkswagen famous worldwide, why keep the Audi name? The German brand bought in July 2023 the IM platform from SAIC that it is now calling Advanced Digitalized Platform. As I wrote at the time, that was already a signt of despair. What if these cars prove to be underbaked and defective? When people start bashing AUDI vehicles, do executives truly believe Audi will not be affected?

Automotive history researchers often wonder how Ford could have created Edsel when it was so evident it would fail and hurt the company. Was it because all the executives who could have said something preferred to chicken out and preserve their jobs by keeping quiet? Was it because the ones in charge were desperate to show they were doing something, anything? At least it was not called FORD, right?

Whatever it was, history repeats itself. Unfortunately, lessons from the past are apparently never learned, something that applies to so many subjects these days that it is not worth mentioning them. Pick one. I'll stick with the automotive industry here. As much as I wish that it was able to find a way out of this dead-end alley in which it is stuck, the signs are not promising. Capital letters and no logo are definitely not the solution.