Audi History - NSU (long)

[jdouglas@mitre.org (jason douglas)]

The following is an extract from the NSU article in  "The World Guide to
Automobiles: The 
Makers and Their Marques," by Baldwin, Georgano, Sedgwick, and Laban.  It
was published in
Britain in 1987 by Macdonald and Co, and the ISBN is 0-356-14278-7.

NSU is an important part in the Audi history.  This article is full of
interesting what-ifs....
What if NSU had continued motorcycle production - would there now be an Audi
motorcycle (just as there are BMW motorcycles)?  If they had gotten the
Wankel right a little earlier, would there be Wankel powered Audis?  I
always thought the Ro80 looked a little like the C2 (late 70s-early 80s Audi
100/5000).

Its also rather ironic that NSU helped Porsche develop his ideas for the
beetle, then was later bought by VW/Audi.

Jason Douglas
----------------------------------------------------------

"In 1873, two swabian engineers, Christian Schmidt and Heinrich Stoll, set
up a workshop at Reidlingen, on an island in the Danube, to manufacture
knitting machines, part of the high technology of the day.  The business did
well, but by 1876 there was no more room to expand and Schmidt left Stoll to
run the works at Reidlingen while he went to establish a new factory at
Neckarsulm.  There, Schmidt branched out into bicycles from the early 1880s
and in 1886 he formed a new company, Neckarsulmer Fahradwerke, AG.

Like Neckarsulm, both Mannheim and Canstatt (a suburb of Stuttgart) also
stood on the river Neckar and in these towns, precisely at this time, Karl
Daimler and Gottlieb Benz were bringing the motor car into the world.  Very
soon, Neckarsulmer Farhradwerke became involved in this new field as a
supplier of chassis to Daimler for the Stahlradwagen.

In 1892 the company adopted the initials NSU as a trade mark, although the
name Neckarsulm was also used for several more years.  In particular, it was
used in 1900 when the company began to manufacture motorcycles, which were
in effect no more than motorized versions of the existing bicycles, but
nonetheless popular.  NSU wen on to be one of the largest motorcycle
producers in the world, with a reputation for technical innovation which was
expressed through racing and record breaking until the late 1950s, when the
company stopped building motorcycles.

NSU's first car was actually built under license from the Belgian
manufacturer Pipe in 1905... but the expensive luxury car had only a limited
market and by 1906 NSU was ready to introduce smaller, less sybaritic models
of its own making.....

In 1910 the expanding company, now with over 1000 employees and an
additional small plant at Heilbronn, was reorganized at Neckarsulmer
Fahrzeugwerke AG.  Larger cars of up to 3.3 liters and even lorries were
added to the range before WW 1 and NSU continued to build cars, trucks, and
motorcycles through the hostilities......

By 1922 the company had about 3500 employees, but still relied on outside
body suppliers...NSU began to expand the factory at Heilbronn in the mid
1920s with the intention of becoming self sufficient there, and by 1927 the
newly built works were in operation.  The move was ill timed, however, as
NSU was suffering the effects of the Depression....

NSU continued to build motorcycles at Neckarsulm but in 1929 was forced to
abandon car manufacture on its own account at Heilbronn.  Instead, it sold a
half share of the factory to Fiat and through a separate, new company, NSU
Automobil AG built Fiats under license as NSU-Fiats.  This name was used
until 1966, after which NSU was able to claim the name solely for its own
products......

By 1934 NSU had recovered sufficiently to commission Dr. Ferdinand Porsche
to develop a people's car which they might build.  Porsche designed the car
and NSU built three prototypes before an upswing in the motorcycle market
led them to shelve the project - which nevertheless was an important step in
the beginnings of the Volkswagen story.

The works at Neckarsulm were heavily damaged during WW II, but production of
lightweight motorcycles resumed in 1949......In 1957, however, the company
stopped motorcycle production - although it continued to make mopeds - and
the following year made a return to car production.....

The new NSU for 1958 was another light car, the Prinz, with an air cooled
598cc twin cylinder engine in the rear, owing a great deal to NSU's
motorcycle expertise.  The Prinz was an enormous success and with gradually
more powerful engines and in sports and GT versions stayed in production
until the early 1970s.  When the Prinz was launched NSU even built a holiday
camp called the Lido, near Venice, solely for Prinz buyers.....

The success of the Prinz and later 1000 and 110 models, with 500,000 cars
built by 1966, helped NSU undertake a far-reaching development program with
a new engine, the wankel rotary.  NSU's first contact with Dr. Felix Wankel
had been  in 1951 when it had sealing problems with rotary valves on  its
racing motorcycles.  Wankel then developed extraordinarily efficient
superchargers for NSU's 1956 record breakers, and these were the direct
forbears of the rotary engine, which first ran at the factory in 1957.

NSU's right to this engine led to a good deal of speculative investment in
the company, which also sold a license for its eventual use to Mazda.  The
Japanese firm almost beat NSU into production with the Wankel, which had
been unexpectedly difficult to refine, but diplomatically held back for long
enough to let NSU launch the first Wankel powered car, the Wankel Spider in
1964, with a 60 bhp single rotor  engine in a shell derived from the sport
Prinz, and proved itself to be very successful in a number of competitions,
although still rather fragile and thirsty as a true road car.

In mid 1967 NSU showed the Ro-80, a twin wankel powered front wheel drive
sporting saloon which was immediately acclaimed but ultimately cost NSU a
fortune in warranty claims on the engine, which still had a tendency to wear
out quickly or, with hamfisted use, to seize completely.  By the time the
car was properly developed , not until the early 70s, its other problem, a
terrible thirst for fuel, had become too important and it was dropped in 1977.

It was the last NSU: In 1969 NSU merged with Audi, which was part of the
Volkswagen empire, to become part of Audi NSU Auto Union AG.  NSU's design
for a conventionally engined partner for the Ro80 was taken over by
Volkswagen and launched in 1971, disastrously, as its K70.  With the
successful smaller NSUs having already been phased out in late 1972,  the
Ro80 was the company's only product and good though it now was becoming it
was too little too late.  When the Ro80 went in 1977, the NSU name went with
it."