Audi Magazine milestone

About the time the first issue of Audi Magazine Australia came off the presses, on the world stage Audi was in the process of winning its first 24 Hours of Le Mans with a car called the R8. That would turn out to be the first of 13 outright victories for the brand in ‘the great race’ over the next 15 years and the R8 name would would transition from the track to the road as the name of the brand’s first supercar.

Now, 25 years later, the brand is preparing to enter another motorsport arena as Audi gears up for its Formula 1 debut – and Audi Magazine Australia is still going strong, racking up 25 uninterrupted years of covering the brand in all its facets.

Since the first issue was published in 2000, AMA has gone on to become the longest running in-house publication in the country. Over that time it has been produced first as a print publication, then also with an iPad version and now exists exclusively on-line, publishing new material weekly and reaching a bigger audience of Audi enthusiasts than ever before.

Over that time it has covered all things Audi, not only bringing news of new models and technological developments, but delving into the Audi lifestyle with travel, food, wine, experiences and people all gracing its pages or screens.

From the very outset, AMAhas been produced in Australia specifically for the Australian market, able to draw on the photographic and technical resources of AUDI AG but with Australian journalists, photographers and designers all working to give the publication a uniquely Australian feel within an unmistakably Audi framework. 

And as the Audi brand has grown in Australia, so too the company’s own publication has grown, notching up 55 print editions with a print run that at its height was in excess of 80,000 magazines per issue.

Originally published as a quarterly, many a retail title over the past 25 years would have happily adopted the numbers generated by AMA. In 2011, the magazine expanded to offer customers and enthusiasts the publication on iPad as well as in print – the only premium magazine in the country to do so. Then in 2015, Audi Australia took the step of increasing the magazine’s digital footprint in keeping with the brand’s Vorsprung durch Technik, with a custom built Audi Magazine site publishing regular content and working in concert with a larger print magazine published twice a year.

Continuing moving with the times and adapting to an ever-changing world, AMA has continued to go from strength to strength, and while the print side of the publication was discontinued in 2017, last year alone AMA in its purely digital form, received more than 750,000 visits and is well and truly on track to eclipse that figure in 2025.

Every Audi Australia new model launch has had a representative of the magazine present – too many to count, but there have been some incredible experiences among them. The launch of the very first Audi R8 at Phillip Island with none other than Mr Le Mans, Tom Kristensen, on hand to introduce the now iconic supercar to the Australian press was a standout. TK’s first trip Down Under and a fitting way to introduce a car that went on to win a record three Bathurst 12 Hour Races in in full race guise as well as becoming one of the most successful GT racers of all time.

Then there are the raft of lifestyle drive and launch events. Race tracks to deserts, Targa Tasmania roads to the ice of Austria and Sweden – and of course the famed Audi Trans-Continental Crossing, an epic drive from Sydney to Broome to launch the Q7 Down Under.

More recently the magazine has covered the launch of Audi’s growing all-electric portfolio, from the original Audi e-tron, through to the extraordinary e-tron GT models and this year alone, the all-new Audi Q4 e-tron and Q6 e-tron models – with still more to come.

There has also been no shortage of international content in the magazine, but the same principle of having Australian writers produce material specifically for our markets still applies. Now, all these years later that same commitment to delivering quality editorial remains at the core of the publication and the regular publishing regimen and ever-increasing interest from readers reflects the speed at which the Audi world is moving. With its capacity to share news as it happens, as well as carrying video and animation, AMA is in a better position than ever before to keep Audi owners, enthusiasts and fans up-to-date with new models and developments, while still exploring the more lifestyle aspects of the Audi world. Arguably one of the few publications in existence where all news in good news.

Happy birthday Audi Magazine Australia and congratulations and thanks to all the talented and passionate people who have supported the title in its first 25 years.