Ludwig Kraus

Ludwig Kraus (1911 to 1997) was a German mechanical engineer who worked first at Daimler-Benz and later led engineering at Auto Union and Audi. From 1939 he worked at Daimler-Benz, where in 1951 he took charge of racing car design, including the Mercedes Silver Arrows W 154 and W 196. In 1963 he became technical director of Auto Union in Ingolstadt, then a Daimler-Benz subsidiary that still built two-stroke DKW cars, and he pushed through a four-stroke engine derived from Daimler medium-pressure engine work, which led to the Audi F 103 and the revival of the Audi marque. He secretly developed the Audi 100, using a computer-aided body structure calculation he had worked out in racing, and after Auto Union and NSU merged in 1969 he was technical board member until the end of 1973. He also brought the designer Giorgetto Giugiaro to Audi, and the Technical University of Hannover gave him an honorary doctorate in 1974.