In direct opposition and in secret to the Volkswagen board, the 1968 Audi 100 was born. An instant commercial success this Audi was the first in the series of front engine water-cooled cars from the Volkswagen group famous for its rear engine air-cooled models. The story goes like this - In 1965 Volkswagen purchased Auto Union (Audi, DKW, Horch and Wanderer) from Mercedes as demand for the Beetle had outstripped Volkswagen''s production capacity - Auto Union had a nearly new production plant at Ingolstadt that was quickly converted for Beetle assembly. With poor sales of the DKW F102 and the new Audi F103 failing to prove itself in the market the Volkswagen boss Heinrich Nordhoff in the belief that the rear engine air-cooled layout was the future gave orders that no further Auto Union models (incl Audi) be developed. It was an engineer by the name of Ludwig Kraus that failed to share Nordhoffs view and set about in secret developing the Audi 100. The first Nordhoff learned about the the project was the presentation of a production ready prototype! Thankfully for Audi fans, Nordhoff gave it the thumbs up. Shown to the press on 26th November 1968, the C1 platform Audi 100 was the company''s largest car and spawned several variants, two and four door saloons and a fast back coupe. Named the 100 after the then engine output of 100ps it surpassed the sales expectations of Volkswagen to the extend additional production had to be set up at Volkswagen''s own plant in Wolfsburg. By 1971 the 500,000th Audi was produced making it the most successful model in the company''s history at the time. The top of the range 100GL was introduced in 1972 and featured the 1.9L engine formerly used in only the Fastbback Coupe S.