When I lived in Italy I bought a lot of OEM stuff for my 1303 from the local dealership, he would get the parts directly from Germany. I noticed this too and he said that ever since the merger in the late '70's that all the parts were like this. The whole VW/Audi merger thing is used a lot more in Europe than it is in the USA. Audi has tried to keep themselves separate from VW in the USA since the early '80's because they wanted to be "upscale", this mostly due to it's competition with Mercedes and BMW here. It's hard to explain, but in Europe a BMW, Mercedes, Audi, and VW are all in the same class but in America a VW has always been known as a "cheap" and "simple" car, so Audi tried to stay away from that image.