Memories of the Weinsberg Coupé
08/03/2025
The article recently published on Zwischengas about the "Limousette " also brought back memories for me.
During a visit to St. Ingbert in the Saarland, Stefan Voit opened the doors to his impressive collection of small cars for us. This museum visit was not only very informative for me, because one very special exhibit brought back childhood memories.
An "NSU-Fiat Weinsberg 500" - a Fiat 500 "Nuova" with a very special body - was my father's first car in the mid-sixties and it was just such a coupé that suddenly stood in front of me in the old industrial hall.
Of course, after almost six decades, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to recreate a photo that was almost the only one of the former family car that had survived. Although the big brother was missing from the current photo session, it would have clearly towered over the little "Weinsberg" by now. While I could barely reach the waistline of the pretty little car in the historical photo, I now wear my belt even higher than the sporty two-cylinder.
Even today, family lore has it that I stood crying at the window when my father took the last trip in his first car - that very "NSU-Fiat Weinsberg 500" - to trade it in at a Bochum dealer for a "Jagst 2" (roughly equivalent to the Fiat 600). My request to keep the red and white coupe so that I could have driven it some 16 years later probably went unheeded, and not just because of the financial situation.
I can only guess whether this triggered an "early childhood trauma" in me, but I still have a special relationship with old vehicles to this day. And the "Weinsberg" still plays a very special role. Decades ago, I started looking for my father's car. So far unsuccessfully. But what came about over the years was contact with other owners of such vehicles. One of them was Willi from Hennef, the previous owner of the coupé we visited in St. Ingbert for the photo shoot.
Willi and I got to know each other through a search query in a classic car magazine. He was probably a good twenty-five years older than me and his memories of his first "Weinsberg" were of his first car. But he also had to part with it and carried the wistful memories of it with him until retirement age. He then acquired an unrestored example from the Heidelberg area and transformed it with great effort into the gem shown here. Not an easy task, considering the rarity of the model. I can still hear how happy Willi was about the set of new original hubcaps he bought at a classic car market.
Many a conversation between us ended with the words: "When I'm gone, you'll get the car!". Of course, that's easy to say, but Willi would have really liked it if it had turned out that way. And me too!
But when the time suddenly came, there was a problem for me. I had only recently moved to my current place of residence and had invested all my available financial resources in a property. And so I had to turn Willi's daughter down when it came to buying her heirloom - despite her very "benevolent pricing".
As a result, the "Weinsberg" went to St. Ingbert, where it still stands and where I paid it the visit described above.
I'm still a little wistful that the little coupé didn't find its way to me. Nevertheless, I am delighted that the car has become part of one of the most exciting small car collections I have ever seen.
