The NSU Rotary page

NSU Wankel Spider

The first car,series produced with NSU-Wankel engine (497 ccm, 50 hp) was introduced in 1963 at Frankfurt IAA motorshow. Series production started in 1964 and lasted to 1967. Only 2375 units were sold. Then the Ro 80 ran into production. Pricing started with 8500 DM and run down to 6990 DM in 1967.
GT-Rallye Winner 66 Wankel Spider

Several buyers were testers for the new engine. With the little convertible car several sport events had been won. So K.-H. Pannowitz and R.Struntz won the 1966 german rallye championship with a slightly modified car, that used a modified engine with 65 HP. These sport-spiders were sold to the interested customers for rallyeing. In 1967 Siegfried Spieß won the German Bergmeisterschaft (Hill climbing) of all classes with his modified Spider and his personally tuned Spider engine, that delivered nearly 100 hp at 11000 rpm. It was extremely loud, when started, the driver always had to use ear clips under his helmet. Spectators could hear the characteristical engine-sound over a long distance. The exhaust system was made of an exactly length-adapted tube with an endmuffler taken from the Rennmax-motorcycle. Spiess also was the favourite tuning specialist in NSU 2- and 4-cylinder cars.
Most sold spiders were colored red (= Alfa-Rot), some others were white (=Gletscher-Weiss). Weight was 700 kg , the hardtop extra 30kg. Length of car was 3.58 meters, heigth 1.26 meters, wheelbase 2.02 meters.

These NSU-Spider infos came from Gerhard Geiling . He is a member of the NSU Prinz IG and NSU Wankel Spider Club Germany, so if you are interested in this clubs or NSU Wankel things he'd be happy to give you any information you need.

dash The dashboard with speedometer and electronic-rpm-meter

The NSU Wankel-Spider engine

Here is shown the NSU power unit blocked with the gearbox. It was used as undercovered watercooled rear engine in the little spider.

Following some small images, click to get the full size ones:

Engine cabinet of the historic
racing spider reraced since the 1990 saison.

Race-spider used for historic racing

white spider at meeting Spider-meeting

x-ray image spider X-ray image from spider