NSU 1000 Front

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This page and it's links will try to give you some idea about the history of the company. The information in these pages is collected form the Internet, and compiled for your pleasure. I tried to make sure no copyrights have been violated; read and enjoy.

History

In 1873 Heinrich Stoll and Christian Schmidt founded a knitting machine factory in Riedlingen, Germany. After some time the founders each went their own way. Stoll moved his part of the factory to Reutlingen in 1879. Schmidt went to Neckarsulm in 1884 and founded NSU: the Neckarsulmer Strickmaschinefabrik.

So the company started out as a manufacturer of knitting machines in 1873. Then came bicycles, and by 1892, the knitting machines were completely replaced by the bicycl.se Not only complete bikes, but also parts for other companies. At that point the name NSU was created, just taking three letters from the name Neckarsulm.

During the first years of the twentieth century, motorbikes. In 1905, the first cars were build, and some were even used (succesfully) in racing.

In the 1928, the manufacturing of cars was stopped. Fiat acquired the rights to the NSU name from a company which had run into severe financial difficulties.

The FIAT company "NSU Automobil AG" started building NSU cars again in 1957, at the same time the then called NSU Werke AG did the same with the (then) new Prinz. This lead to much confusion, and in 1959, the FIAT cars where marked NSU/FIAT. In 1960 the NSU company was renamed to "NSU Motorenwerke AG".

The Sport Prinz was introduced in 1959, followed by the Prinz 4 in 1961.

In 1964, the first production car using a Wankel rotary engine was introduced after 8 years of development of the engine: the Wankel Spider.

On March 10, 1969, a contract was signed uniting AUTO UNION GmbH and NSU Motor Works AG and establishing a new joint company, AUDI NSU AUTO UNION AG. Auto Union Gmbh was partially owned by the Volkswagen AG.

There had been too many problems with the revolutionary wankel engines for NSU to keep going. The last car produces by NSU was the Ro 80. This model was one of the first luxury cars with a wankel engine; this, and several other items, made the car one of the last 26 contenders in the Car Of The Century Celebration.

AUDI AG NSU GmbH
Postfach 1144
74148 Neckarsulm, Germany

Phone: +49 7132/ 31 1345 or 31 1452
Fax: .../ 31 1720

If you want to know all there is about NSU, you should visit the Deutches Zwei-rad und NSU museum.

Links

History:
125 Jahre NSU - Info and photo's
Encyclopedia - [Polish]
IWZ Reportage: NSU - [German]
125 Jahre Visionen in Bewegung - 125 years NSU [German]
Von der Max-Kabine zum Prinz - Building the first car [German]
Historiaa - [Finnish]
Fredy's NSU Page - images and info [German]

Discussing NSU: - Moved

A list of forums is being maintained in the forum of the dutch club

Audi:
Turbulent Times - a small piece of AUDI history
Wie Alles Began - The AUDI history, done by marke
AUDI Fan - many pages, including some on NSU [German]

Miscelaneous:
NSU Prinz & NSU Wankel Homepage von GeGe - [German]
NSUmotor - NSU und Wankel Homepage [German, English, French]
NSU Badges - Some history and logo's
Zender Gruppe - Car rebuilders who's history started with TT's

Parts:
Koni Stossdämpher - small parts list for Prinz III, 4 and Ro80 [German]

Owners:
NSU Web - Manfred Raisch' pages [German]
Gert Nilsen - Swedish guy, with lot's of links


Page Maintained By: Marc du Bois
Last Updated: January 3, 2006
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