There WAS a link!
In 1932, four German marques, DKW, Wanderer, Audi and Horch, merged to form Auto-Union. The Audi and Horch were expensive cars that provided some competition for Mercedes by the late 1930s, while the DKW was a tiny two-stroke powered economy-car, that pioneered FWD in 1931.
After WWII, only the least expensive Auto-Union marque, the DKW, was able to resume production. Those DKWs continued to be small FWD cars, powered by two or three-cylinder two-stroke engines, but priced considerably higher than the contemporary VW Beetle.
In 1958, Daimler-Benz AG purchased Auto-Union and unsucsessfully attempted to sell DKWs in the US.
By 1965, Daimer-Benz engineers had designed a high-compression, four-stroke, slant-four to replace the two-stroke DKW powerplant in the final DKW body. That same year, VW purchased Auto-Union from Daimler-Benz, and it was that four-stroke powered, FWD DKW-body that VW continued production as the postwar Audi.

Happy Motoring, Mark

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DrDKW