NSU Prinz
NSU Prinz
“Drive a Prince and you’re a King!”
The NSU Prinz, which is German for ‘Prince’, was built in West Germany from 1958 as a high-performance city car. It was designed to attract the attention of an increasingly selective market as a second car, or a city car for ladies. To this end, it was a car built with mountain driving performance in mind. By 1960, more than 2,500 NSU Prinzes had been sold in the USA as well. Cute is its middle name!
The 1958 NSU Prinz
These 1958 Prinzes are two survivors.
The beige one is a completely preserved car imported by the NSU/Volkswagen importer for Italy but never sold. The import tax made it too expensive compared with the 4Cyl Fiat 600, and it was not at the time considered an attractive car. The importer kept it in the dealshop for 59 years, never repainted – even the tyres are original!
The baby blue Prinz was found in a remote village in the mountains, near the Swiss border. In fact, they’ve proven to be great cars to drive in the snow. Rear engine, light front wheel base, zippy and prompt engines. True 1950s cars that are both cute and practical!
A Lesser-Known German Classic
NSU, a German motorcycle producermanufacturer, had a long pre-war history of producing large racing vehicles from 1905. Interrupted by the war, NSU re-entered automobile production in 1957 with the Prinz. This new model had a rear-engine layout and the overhead cam twin-cylinder, air-cooled power-plant displaced 598cc. The car had seating for four and featured wide-opening doors. It was also equipped with an Ultramax camshaft drive, already proven in motorcycle use. This drive system featured twin connecting rods that were actuated by an eccentric on the crankshaft. In essence, it used reciprocal motion to create circular motion in a similar fashion to how pistons in the cylinders are harnessed for forward motion.
NSU would produce around 95,000 examples of the Prinz I, II and III through to 1962. The target market was mostly as a domestic city car, for families investing in their first car. But surprisingly, the car was exported to the US as well, with some diffusion into niche markets. It was then assembled in South America and Australasia for local markets, in the process helping Uruguay launch its own auto industry.
Quite an achievement for such a small cutie! The Prinz is testimony to the fact that that quality pays off.
How we met
I discovered the NSU Prinz while walking around a car show. I thought I knew everything about bubble cars and 1950s cars, but… suddenly my jaw dropped at the NSU Club booth in front of this beige, one owner, American specs (tubular bumpers just like the blue one) perfect example…I was hooked. I went into the club booth to ask about the car, where I might find one for sale, and got the address of the baby blue one in Aosta. When I call the owner he says, “I don’t know what you’ll do with that thing but, sure come get it if you want. €8k and it was in my garage.
The beige Prinz came about as a consequence of the first one. I posted a picture of the Italian-registered blue Prinz and was swarmed with messages of interest. Among these, I heard a rumor that BERTI AUTOMOBILI in Vicenza (the original importer of NSU in the ’60s) had three in his garage. I drove there immediately, but only one had survived a damaging flooding in the ’80s. After three years calling to plead and convince, one day I got that magic call!
