| The tiny Prinz, was NSU's first venture into the minicar world. It was tiny, but well built, there were two versions the prinz sedan and the sport prinz. The sedan featured boxy, upright styling and wrap around windows, the windows didn't wind they were of the sliding type, to save weight. The sport prinz featured slick streamlined styling, by bertone. Both cars were powered by a small twin cylinder, air cooled engine, of about 500cc. This small engine devoloped 36hp and delivered about 50mpg. Even so this small car didn't sell well in its first year in America (1958), with only around 30 sold it seemed that it would be a complete failure in the American market. However in 1959 the little car beat its competeitors by 14 laps in the little le mans race at lime rock, and the cars began to sell. Latter the old prinz was replaced by the new TT and 1000. Which was a four cylinder car, still the engine was mounted in the rear. In the 70's NSU introduced their second rotary engined car, which proved to be a complete failure. The engines wore out rapidly and NSU kept their promise and replaced the engines free of charge under warranty. Near bankrupt, VW stepped in and bought the company, Combined it with DKW (auto-union) to make Audi, and there first front wheel drive cars. Now over 40 years later this tiny masterpiece is hard to come by, and deserves to be better known. NSU went on to become part of the auto-union and is now owned by VW. |
