The Audi 50 At 50, Germany’s First Small Car

The Audi 50 At 50, Germany's First Small Car

The Audi 50 that was the basis for the VW Polo is now 50. The small car was developed ahead of the oil crisis of 1973 and arrived at just the right time in 1974 when demand for economical cars was growing rapidly. An economical, small, front wheel drive three door hatchback.

Audi 50 GL

The new car was intended to be modern with added versatility, sitting below the Audi 80 and 100 as the entry level for the marque. Due to the absorption of the remains of NSU into the Volkswagen Group there was going to be a need to replace the NSU small car which was coming naturally to the end of its production run. 

Development work started in 1970 as Audi NSU Auto Union headed by Chief Technical Officer Ludwig Kraus. Styling was left to Hartmut Warkuß, who had designed the 80 previously.

Audi 50 Brandenburg Gate

The idea behind the Audi 50 was to be “A contemporary car must be the right size for today’s imperatives.” This became the design manifesto for the 50 and the key element to the success of the design was transversely mounting the engine and driving the front wheels. The engineers at Ingolstadt used this to design a car with a relatively large interior volume for its external size. This was to become a common trend with other small and mid-sized front wheel drive cars.

Audi 50 X-Ray

The Audi 50 was only 3.49 meters in length and weighed an unthinkable today, 685 kilograms. The trunk, or boot if you prefer, was large for a car of its size and the rear seats folded to give rather impressive carrying capacity.

Audi 50 At 50

The two models, the Audi 50 LS and GL  both came with 1.1 litre four cylinder engine producing 50 PS and 60 PS respectively. The top speed for the LS was 142 kph and the GL another 10 km more at 152 kmh. To achieve the increase in power the GL version of the 1.1 required the use of Super gasoline where the LS would run on regular.

In 1977 the engine of PS was replaced with a 1300cc version that ran on the same regular gasoline as the LS.

Audi 50 At 50, Summer 1974

The Audi 50 was unveiled to the international media Sardinia during the summer of 1974. The first cars reaching dealers on October 26th with the Audi 50 LS priced at 8,195 Deutschmarks and the Audi 50 GL 400 more at 8,510. That’s 14,489.86 € and 15,046.83 € today.

Audi 50 At 50

The initial development of the new Audi was done at Neckarsulm before moving to Technical Development Ingolstadt and was built at the Volkswagen plant in Wolfsburg. 43,002 Audi 50 models were produced by March 31 1975, when production started on the nearly identical VW Polo. 

The Audi 50 only lasted a few years, and a total of 180,828 made by the summer of 1978. But it was the Polo which was a huge success having become the standard in the small car segment and selling millions over many generations.

Audi left the economy car sector and moved into more upmarket segments. However, it wasn’t the first time that Audi had handed a model to VW, but those are another story.

Thanks to Volkswagen for the images,

Simon

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