The forgotten test winners and today's favorites
09/24/2021
In mid-1970, the car magazine "auto motor und sport" carried out a major comparison test in which the market leader VW Beetle was compared with its competitors. The Fiat 128, the Opel Kadett, the Simca 1100, the NSU 1200 and the DAF 55 had to, or were allowed to, compete. The effort required to compare the cars on the basis of facts was immense.
Who won this comparison, you might ask yourself, and of course your first guess would be a German car. But far from it. The Simca 1100 won, followed by the Fiat 128 and the DAF 55, with the German cars VW, Opel and NSU coming in 4th to 6th place.
Incidentally, the cars all cost between DM 5595 and 6060, the Beetle 1500 was the cheapest of the cars, the NSU 1200 C the most expensive.
And today, a good 50 years later? The winners are almost forgotten, the losers of yesteryear are more sought after as classic cars today, at least in our part of the world.
However, it is definitely worth taking a look back at the test printed over two issues. Part 1 was printed in ams 11/1970 , part 2 was published in ams 12/1970 .
