Davey . . .
The Ro80 is a fascinating car, but you’ll not likely find one in the US. Production began in late ‘67 for the ‘68 model year and although NSU had sold small numbers of cars here they never federalized the Ro80 for emissions and safety standards. It’s not the first rotary car but the third: the first was the little single rotor NSU Wankel Spider introduced in ‘64 and produced through ‘67. I don’t know if NSU ever officially imported any here, but some were privately brought over, a fairly easy thing to do with a car built before Jan 1 of ‘68. The Wankel Spider was based heavily on NSU’s line of small rear-engined two and four cylinder cars but with a unique convertible body and of course the single rotor engine. The Ro80 was a clean sheet of paper design which makes it that much more interesting.
The second rotary car was the Mazda Cosmo, first shown in ‘64 and tested in the next few years before going into regular production in early ‘67, several months before the Ro80. Both the Ro80 and Cosmo have twin rotor engines, though history has shown that Mazda got the rotary mostly right from the start and NSU pretty much failed. Early on the Ro80 became famous for several things: super smooth if not groundbreaking performance, good handling, comfort and looks, poor economy and utterly dreadful durability. Engines failed left and right and forced NSU into insolvency when they could least afford it. In ‘69 they merged with the remnants of Auto Union and thus became part of Audi.
The first Audi 100 had been released a few months previous to the merger so NSU did not contribute to that car, though it can be argued that as it was subsumed into the Audi arm of VWAG there is a legitimate claim to NSU contributing to any Audi developed after ‘69. The first Audi 100 has a rather interesting lineage itself, being a cross between DKW and Mercedes. Auto Union first embraced front wheel drive cars with the little two stroke DKW of 1933 as their small car. It was a solid design but after WWII their main plants were in the Eastern Bloc, which begat the Trabant and Wartburg. In the west Auto Union regrouped and continued with the two stroke cars, using a three cylinder engine. Incidently, Saab entered the car market in ‘49 after their aircraft engineers had liked and to a large degree copied the DKW, though as with Trabant and Wartburg Auto Union had no control over them and made no royalties.
By the late ‘50s DKW sales were clearly dropping and they needed a more modern design. Daimler-Benz bought into the company and provided them with the funding and technology to produce a modern four stroke engine, but after a few years decided that DKW didn’t fit with their future plans. VW then gradually purchased Auto Union from D-B between ‘64 and ‘66, and introduced the new four stroke car as an Audi, which was a name Auto Union had not used since before WWII. It was this four cylinder, four stroke front drive sedan that evolved into the first Audi 100 of the late '60s.
One odd bit to this story is the VW K70. This was a virtually complete new NSU design intended to be a cheaper companion to the Ro80, and used much of the Ro80's technology and design except for the rotary engine - it even looks like a smaller and less elegant Ro80. VW’s own mid size car, the rear engine 411/412 was a sales flop so they simply introduced the K70 as a VW for ‘70, making it their first front drive car. It also signified that VW wasn’t going to perpetuate the NSU name; although all NSU models being produced during the merger in ‘69 continued for some years no new models were introduced under the NSU name.
After NSU and Mazda only one other car company ever produced rotary cars, this being Citroen. They had two limited production models, the M35 from ‘69-‘71 and the GS Birotor in ‘73. Engines were from a joint NSU-Citroen venture called Comotor and of NSU design. The M35 was a very limited production test car sold only to those who applied to and received approval from Citroen; they had to agree to give feedback on the operation of their cars. The Birotor was intended to be a mass-market car but was introduced virtually on the eve of the ‘73 energy crises. The rotary’s poor economy and bad reputation of any NSU related rotary engine combined to kill it virtually at birth. Citroen invested large amounts of cash into Comotor and in the end paid dearly for it.
Pic is of NSU Wankel Spider, aren't those the cutest little tailfins?
