Ride prince and you are king

Let’s start with the naming convention. In 1873, Christian Schmidt (1844–1884) and Heinrich Stoll (1847–1914) took over the mechanical workshop for the manufacture of knitting machines in Riedlingen an der Donau, Germany. Just three years later the two went their separate ways. In 1880 Schmidt moved the knitting machine manufacture to Neckarsulm, where the NSU engine appeared.

However, the NSU brand name does not stand for “Newing and Knitting Machines Union” as is often claimed, it is simply an acronym for the Swabian site in Neckarsulm. The path from NSU to automaker is similar to that of many companies when they entered the mobility business: you start outside the industry, move on to two-wheelers and eventually automobiles. Although founder Schmidt died in 1884 at the age of 39, NSU soon began producing bicycles and developed motorcycles from 1901 – initially with single-cylinder four-stroke engines from the Swiss manufacturer Zedel.

World’s largest motorcycle manufacturer

By the mid-1950s NSU was the world’s largest two-wheeler manufacturer by volume. Designed by Gustav Adolf Baumm (1920–1955), aerodynamic motorcycles with the rider unusually recumbent set many fuel consumption and speed records. There are also many NSU victories to celebrate in the race. Motorcycle production in Germany ceased in 1963, when the German economic miracle later demanded more cars and fewer mopeds. Although NSU motorcycles are still manufactured by Preduzece Tito Sarajevo and sold as NSU Pretis for several years in then Yugoslavia, the business was no longer lucrative.

Despite the NSU beginning in 1906, the development of cars was not as successful as two-wheeled vehicles. After the First World War, demand increased. In 1925, however, NSU took over the Schebera bodywork factory in Berlin. Fiat joins forces with Dresdner Bank to save NSU. NSU automobile production ceases in 1932, from 1934 NSU-Fiat in Heilbronn produces licensed models such as the NSU-Fiat 1000 or, after WWII, the NSU-Fiat 500 C (same as the Fiat 500 Topolino C). Such licensed models continued into the 1970s, with the latest Fiat 124, 125 or 128.

The little prince becomes king

This is independent of the original NSU in Neckarsulm. The latter, badly affected by WWII, struggles with successful two-wheeled vehicles such as the Lambretta motor scooter and soon realizes that small cars will be in greater demand than mopeds. A three-wheeled scooter with a Töff engine was created, and from it in 1957 the NSU Prinz was created, with a 583 cc two-cylinder and 20 hp four-wheel at the rear.

The little prince quickly found admirers by sticking to his advertising slogan “If you ride a prince, you become a king”. Its successor, the larger Prinz 4, rolled off the assembly line more than 620,000 times between 1961 and 1973 in the typical “tub design” of the time. And with the Prinz 1000, a diagonally-mounted air-cooled one-liter four-cylinder at the rear tuned to 70 or even 90 hp, the TT and TTS models, the small automaker entered the race in the 1960s. Race princes weighing less than 700 kilos are especially successful in slalom competitions. Developing a taste for dynamics, NSU wanted to take the car world by storm with the NSU Wankel Spider, the first mass-produced vehicle with a Wankel engine in 1964. But success remains manageable, with just under 2,400 copies sold.

Wankel gets a death sentence

However, NSU continued to believe in revolutionary engine technology, and in 1967 it launched the Ro 80, an upper mid-range sedan with a futuristic-looking, particularly aerodynamic wedge shape. The ultra-modern Ro 80, with a theoretically ingenious engine, proves in practice to be technically vulnerable: Ro 80 drivers greet each other with a thumbs up, depending on the number of engines being replaced. The NSU then took control of the technology, but it was too late: the Ro 80 failed and the NSU was in trouble.

This time, Volkswagen Group steps in as the savior. In August 1969, Volkswagen’s Auto Union (the Audi brand would later save the entire Volkswagen Group), which was then NSU AG, merged to form Audi NSU Auto Union AG. Developed as a replacement for the Ro 80, the very modern K 70 front-engined sedan was also adopted and launched as the VW K 70 instead of the NSU. However, this model was not very successful either.

Audi NSU Auto Union becomes Audi

After the 1975 decision to close the Neckarsulm plant was thwarted by violent backlash (7,000 out of 10,500 workers marched in protest), still 4,500 workers were laid off. The last Ro 80 rolled off the assembly line in 1977, and with it the time of ambitious automaker NSU came to an end. In 1985, the Volkswagen subsidiary was renamed Audi AG, and the NSU name finally died out. The only ticker symbol for Audi AG stock is still NSU – because today’s Audi AG is nothing more than the legally renamed NSU AG.