ooooIYKYK, ISSUE #oo30
From the outset, the mission of this website has been to inform, educate and entertain the Audi community. For the most part, this has been achieved through reporting and feature storytelling, but over the last few months I have also been putting a significant amount of effort into building out the ooooIYKYK Audi Archives. They are currently the top nav button under the Resources tab in the menu above.
So, what are the Audi Archives? At present, they are a somewhat uneven mix of encyclopedia-style reference pages covering various elements of the Audi lexicon. As they continue to fill out, however, the goal is for them to become a go-to reference for anyone looking to better understand the intricacies of the four rings across its full history.
If last week’s discussion of the Audi lexicon felt abstract, this should help clarify it. Regular readers may have noticed an increasing number of links back to the archives over the past few months, or perhaps spotted the studio-style photography of historic models now being featured as a highlight section on the @ooooIYKYK Instagram account.
The formula is straightforward. For now, I am adding pages as quickly as possible, with an emphasis on subjects currently in the news. That might mean a new model such as the Audi E7X, or a wave of historic entries inspired by Audi Tradition’s recent reveal of the anniversaries it will be highlighting in 2026.
Using AI image-rendering tools, I aim to give everything a consistent look and feel. Most cars appear against a white studio background for a clean, uniform presentation. These tools also allow me to visualize cars for which very few photographs exist, or vehicles that never progressed beyond the design-model phase, such as the rally version of the quattro concept highlighted recently. While adding obvious entries like the (not yet added) Sport quattro is important, giving space to more obscure cars that many readers may never have heard of is equally a priority. Supporting that with proper vernacular, whether official chassis codes or community shorthand like “B9.5,” is also intended to help readers learn to speak the language of the Audi brand.
I explored something similar years ago when I built the large photo galleries on my previous, now-defunct website Fourtitude.com. Later, I added chassis-code references to Audi Club North America’s planned but not yet launched discussion forums, which have not yet gone live but presumably will once their talented and overworked team is able.
Those earlier resources were built primarily for aficionados. Were they useful? That remains to be seen for Audi Club North America since that section has yet to go live, but I know the Fourtitude galleries were regularly used by friends within Audi Design, who expressed genuine disappointment when the site eventually went offline under a subsequent owner who rolled Fourtitude into its sister website VWvortex and prioritized discussion forums.
These Audi Archives are intended to be the next evolution of that idea. Yes, they will include galleries and chassis codes, but they are meant to go much further. Historical background is essential, but so are specifications and even deeper layers of data.
The Fourtitude galleries took years to build, and I do not expect these archives to require any less time. Even so, they are already filling in nicely, thanks in part to the excellent work Audi Tradition does in reliably telling the brand’s history through press releases and excellent reference books. Add to that my own growing library of books, historic media kits, and period literature, and the aim is for this to become something genuinely valuable to the Audi community, whether fans, dealers, or even executives like the aforementioned Audi designers in Germany.
Will I make mistakes? I might. Nobody’s perfect. Like other reference projects similar to Wikipedia, it’s helpful to reach out and let me know if I’ve gotten something wrong. Getting something wrong is never the intent, but it does happen. Any of these things are a work in progress, and that’s especially so when it’s a one man team as this site is currently, or even a small team like I had the pleasure to work with at Audi Club or Vortex Media.
On another important note: entries are published according to their historical timeframe. While the web did not exist in 1906, August Horch certainly did. As a result, stories covering Horch’s activities from that period are published with a 1905 date in the Archive’s database. Because of this, you will not always see the historical backfill appearing on the site’s front page. Searching or browsing the archives will take you there.
Click on the “2000” tag, for example, and you will already find a mix of entries from that year, including the Y2K opening of Audi museum mobile, Audi’s presence at the Essen Motor Show that fall with the RS 4 Sport (B5), the debut of the Audi Rosemeyer concept, and production milestones for the A2 and A3 (type 8L). That list is far from exhaustive, but it illustrates how the Archive is designed to work.
Finally, consider subscribing, or encouraging others in the Audi community to subscribe, to this weekly ooooIYKYK newsletter. Each issue includes a list of new archive entries at the bottom, and new archive pages are also being added to provide further reading and context for stories published on the main blog. And, while the newsletter is entirely free to subscribe to, consider also a paid subscription if you appreciate this project and wish to underwrite it. I don’t paywall this site in any way, but eventually ooooIYKYK needs to become a sustainable endeavor. Voluntary paid subscriptions help make that happen, assuring the lights remain on and the gears remain turning.
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ooooIYKYK AUDI ARCHIVE UPDATES
Terminology: 5-Cylinder
Road Cars: Audi RS 4 edition 25 Years – EU 🇪🇺 (B9.5, 2024), Audi RS 4 Sport – EU 🇪🇺 (B5, 2001), Audi RS 4 Sport – UK 🇬🇧 (B5, 2001), Audi A3 – EU 🇪🇺 (type 8L, 1996-2001), Audi A3 5-Door – EU 🇪🇺 (type 8L, 1996-2001), Audi A3 – EU 🇪🇺 (type 8L, 1996-2001), A8L 6.0 quattro – EU 🇪🇺 (D4, 2001-2002), Audi 80 Sedan – EU 🇪🇺 (B3 / type 89, 1987-1992), Audi 100 2-Door Sedan – EU 🇪🇺 (C2 / type 43, 1976-1982), Audi 100 Avant – EU 🇪🇺 (C2 / type 43, 1977-1982), Audi 100 Sedan – EU 🇪🇺 (C2 / type 43, 1976-1982), DKW Munga (1956-1962), DKW F1 (1931-1942), Horch Modell 1 Vis à Vis (1900-1901)
Race Cars; Audi A4 quattro Super Touring (1996), Audi Coupé GT Group 2 (1980–1982), Auto Union Type C (1936–1937), NSU 6/60 hp (1926), Horch 11/22 hp (1906)
Event Editions: Essen Motor Show (2000)
Engines: Audi 6.0 W12 (AZC)
Collaborations & Tie-Ins: DKW Munga Himalaya Expedition (1958)
People: August Horch
This story is the basis of an issue of the ooooIYKYK Newsletter on Substack. If you’ve got too much going on in your life and don’t want to keep coming back to this website just to check in and see what I’m writing about, signing up to the ooooIYKYK Newsletter is an excellent way to get this content coming directly to you in your inbox. Subscribe at Substack via the link below, and consider becoming an optionally paying subscriber if you want to help support the viability of this title.