With 1.8 million vehicles sold in 2018, it’s difficult to imagine a world without Audi now, but it’s only through a series of unusual events that the company didn’t disappear 80 years ago, to be remembered by nobody other than scholars of German industrial history. And then, later, the company became a feared rival to BMW and Mercedes-Benz under the leadership of the later Volkswagen mogul Ferdinand Piëch, who died just a few days ago. This is the story: