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NSU Ro 80 - an automotive milestone with flaws

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Created on November 1, 1987

Text:

Hans-Peter Lang

Photos:

Archiv

38

Archiv

38

NSU Ro 80 - NSU Ro 80

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NSU RO 80 (1967) - on a test drive

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NSU RO 80 (1968) - dynamic movement

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NSU Ro 80 (1969) - in front of old walls

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NSU Ro 80 (1968) - elegant shape seen from all sides

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NSU Ro 80 (1967) - in full driving dynamics

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NSU Ro 80 (1971) - contemporary photography and not just a car

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NSU Ro 80 (1967) - on a small side road

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NSU Ro 80 (1967) - in the wind tunnel

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NSU Ro 80 - design sketches with partly still very different front design

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NSU Ro 80 (1967) - front view

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NSU RO 80 (1968) - Engine compartment

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NSU Ro 80 - The Wankel engine in sectional view - the two rotors and the flange-mounted semi-automatic gearbox are clearly visible

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NSU RO 80 (1968) - Engine compartment

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NSU Ro 80 (1967) - a bird's eye view

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NSU Ro 80 (1967) - functional lines

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NSU RO 80 (1968) - bird's eye view

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NSU Ro 80 (1967) - Interior

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NSU Ro 80 (1967) - front view

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NSU Ro 80 (1967) - NSU the Erlkönig

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NSU Ro 80 (1967) - what's where in the Ro 80

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NSU RO 80 (1967) - Steering wheel and dashboard

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NSU Ro 80 (1968) - Short tests Geneva 1968

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NSU RO 80 (1968) - Headlight and front design

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NSU RO 80 (1968) - Access to the interior

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NSU Ro 80 (1967) - folding rear seat

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NSU Ro 80 (1967) - the barely visible engine

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NSU Ro 80 - The engine is in front of the front axle, the gearbox behind it

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NSU Ro 80 (1967) - Brake disk and caliper

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NSU Ro 80 (1967) - elegance and simplicity

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NSU Ro 80 (1967) - with open doors

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NSU Ro 80 (1967) - Trunk and spare wheel

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NSU Ro 80 (1967) - Trunk and spare wheel

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NSU Ro 80 (1967) - seen from diagonally behind

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NSU Ro 80 (1967) - seen from the front at an angle

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Summary

German motoring journalist Dieter Korp wrote about the NSU Ro 80 in a 1976 test: "The blinker control ticks loudly like a grandfatherly wall clock. But that's the only grandfatherly thing about this car, whose overall design is still so progressive...". This report goes back to the beginnings of the bold design and describes the incomparable NSU Ro 80, supplemented with over 30 illustrations.

This article contains the following chapters

Atypical automobile
New from the ground up
Two-disc rotary engine
Fickle - fickle
Safety a top priority
Numerous awards
Shady sides too...
The Ro80 as a subsidy object

Estimated reading time: 9min

Preview (beginning of the article)

German motoring journalist Dieter Korp wrote about the NSU Ro 80 in a test in 1976 (9 years after its launch): "The blinker control ticks loudly like a grandfatherly wall clock. But that's the only grandfatherly thing about this car, whose overall design is still so progressive..." The NSU Ro 80 with Wankel engine, first presented to the astonished public at the IAA in Frankfurt nine years earlier in 1967, looked like Fred Astaire in a dance class for beginners in the car crowd of the time. In general, the Ro 80 was and is an atypical automobile; even its development was different from that of most other cars. Ten years before its premiere at the Frankfurt Motor Show, on February 1 , 1957, a rotary piston engine was put to the test for the first time at NSU in Neckarsulm. The many years of intensive research work by Felix Wankel, supported technically, personally and financially by NSU Motorenwerke AG, Neckarsulm - at that time the world's largest manufacturer of motorcycles and bicycles - showed the first measurable successes: 29 hp at 17,000 rpm from 125 cm3 chamber volume (towards the end of 1957),

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