The NSU TT/TTS are the stuff of legends. With their high-winding OHC transverse mid-rear mounted fours (1100 and 1200 cc) in a 3/4 scale Corvair body, it made for performance that (in relative terms) even put the turbo-charged Monza Spyder to shame. These cars acquitted themselves very well on tracks of all types, never mind a twisting Alpine road. r0b0tr10t has a couple of them in his massive download at the Cohort, and I can’t resist sharing this one.
Here’s one strutting its stuff at a 1976 race at the Nürburgring, with its rear engine lid partly open to help keep the sizzling little air-cooled four cool.
The TT had either a 1100 or 1200 cc (after 1967) with 55 or 65 hp. The TTS was specifically designed for rally and sports-racing, and had smaller 998cc mill to compete in the 1 liter class. Output was either 70 or 85hp, depending on state of tune.
Needless to say, there’s an huge cult around these cars. That started almost from the beginning; when I was in Austria in 1969, these were infinitely cool. Still are. Always will be.
Talk about letting the cat out of the bag… We recently returned from 5 days of travelling among other places to McPherson, KS. Among the many gems we saw there was this neat early 1970s NSU.
Engine
Thanks for that. Almost forgot what an unusual design that head is.
It’s got a single overhead cam with rocker arms. That gives crossflow breathing, with the plug near the middle. You could easily pull off those eight valve covers, secured by wire springs, and adjust valves without getting dirty, like you did with a VW. Makes you wonder why anyone would ever do it differently.
Note also the cam chain on the right side. Only lately has VW-Audi returned to this elegant, durable alternative to the disposable cam belt.
Pretty advanced stuff for the mid-sixties, in an engine created by pairing two motorcycle blocks.
If you have a Porsche 911 cylinder heads/rocker box laying about, hold it up to the NSU cylinder head assembly. Makes one extremely suspicious of the known plagarists at Porsche.
And here’s how it looks in TTS form. The intake has to snake over the top of the head, because the ports face forward.
Nice velocity trumpets (or whatever the heck else those things are called).
I was in Germany in 1970 and owned a 1970 nsu 1200. I built it up and roadraced it. The photo above shows the weber sidedraft carbs that I used on mine. The us export version of the 1000 & 1200 both had a 69 hp engine that had 64mm pistons and cast iron jugs on aluminuim base. The carbs had a wing nut the size of a quarter so you could rejet them without disassembly. The max hp that I could build out of this engine was 130. It only lasted 600 miles then the bottom end needed bearings. With the original engine you could turn 9600 rpm, when I was done with building it up with 75 mm pistons wit 11mm domes and a chrome stock throw crank it would hold 11,500 rpm for 600 miles. The fastest I ever run it on the track was 140mph at nurnberg road course.
That’s the 1200, which got an elongated nose for more luggage space (a la VW Super Beetle and VW 1600 and 412). Just like them, the result was more space up front, but unbalanced looks and proportions.
Unfortunately, as a bit of rain came into the area (which might be detected from the pics) I was unable to chat with the owner. I knew of the name NSU, but did not know this car existed. There were many more unknown vehicles present at this event. It was a really really unusual thing in the middle of central Kansas.
Sadly many of these had the engine removed to make racing sidecars and were a rare sight.Has a look of the Hillman Imp about it and what a lovely shade of green
Guilty of that, had one in a sidecar outfit.
Four Amal monobloc carbs, driving through a BSA scrambles gearbox.
I didn’t know the Audi TT had an ancestor. That helps explain the oddball stying of the modern ones.
Aside from the name, I consider the Audi TT to be the modern equivalent of the Karmann Ghia. The New Beetle and TT were both designed at VW’s California design studios by J Mays and Freeman Thomas, both riding on the Golf chassis.
Never thought of it that way but you’re spot-on. Especially the 1st-gen, it was cute like a Ghia. Just don’t tell anyone who drives an Audi TT.
Both NSUs had a silver “TT” badge in italics, almost identical to the one on first-gen Audi TTs. There the resemblance ends, though. The NSU TT is a roomy subcompact that seated four adults, with a proper rear engine. BOC’s comparison to the Karman Ghia is more apt.
In 1970 when I bought mine in germany all the dealerships the paper work stated NSU/Audi
Cool buggy, would love to hear it scream. And that Ring shot with the lifted inside wheel may be the cutest car photo ever.
Try this, one of many. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JXEvx9Faoc
Here’s a driver’s view: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLrVpDU1Wns
MIne had the Abarth muffler, with four chrome pipes. It was quieter and more sonorous than this racing setup.
Thanks! That was awesome, pure aural amphetamine. Now I want one to take to the track in the Imp’s trunk.
Love to hear about forgotten but great cars. It looks like NSU improved on Chevy’s design, somehow.
According to Wikipedia, when NSU was absorbed into VW (in one of the many baffling evolutions of the German car industry), VW canned this model as too competitive with the Beetle & using capacity needed for building Audis. I hate hearing of cars discontinued for reasons like this.
It was probably inevitable. NSU was failing, in large part due to poor sales of the rotary Ro80, which was really their Hail Mary pass: https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/ccoty-1968-nomination-nsu-ro80-the-tragic-automotive-goddess/
There’s probably no way they could have developed a new generation of small cars, with their low volume, and the low margins on small cars.
Several key differences under the skin vs. the Corvair. This was a very lightweight car (1440 lbs., from memory) with a short wheelbase. The little 1-liter all-alloy engine was very lightweight, equal to the typical 150-lb. driver of that bygone day. And the engine was upright, transverse, and tucked close behind the rear seat. So it felt like a mid-engined… sedan.
Wow havent seen one of those in ages like an Imp on steroids Typical VW of the era can this because it was competition for the FAILING Beetle. The Beetle was in the toilet when VW startede buying other companies desperately casting around for a replacement for the increasingly hard to sell Beetle.
Wow, an anticompetitive takeover. Why am I not suprised?
Is it just me, or does that look like a Renault Gordini?
It certainly does! When I was a kid in France in the early 1970s the Renault Gordinis were basically cars driven by the kind of guys your mother warned you against… and huge fun of course. The NSUs were possibly more of a connoisseur’s choice, they were fewer and further between, and of course Renault dealerships were more plentiful and Renault parts cheaper and easier to find… But that was the same spirit, and the golden era of these small, light, rear-engined devils. Both have a enormous and well-deserved cult following in their respective homelands. I’d be hard put to choose between them. Heck, I’ll take the two of them! Haven’t seen a NSU in decades. This one looks fantastic in green. It made my day!
About eight or nine years ago I went to the historic races at Mosport and saw one of these on the track. I have to agree, very cool.
I saw one of these at a local Cars & Coffee a few months back, it was German day. No one knew what it was. The owner showed us the engine in back and we were all fascinated.
What doesn’t come through on film is how delightful the handling was. With yellow Bilsteins, the cars cornered flat as a steamroller. The rear trailing arms and swing axles were relatively well-behaved. WIth the stock narrow tires, the handling limits were tantalizingly close at hand.
Steering was fast and precise, with strong self-centering. It used kingpins angled so that the wheels took on negative camber in turns. Though I drive two NSUs for a total of ten years, I never had them aligned– who knew the specs? The cars continued tracking straight down the road like an arrow, and my Michelin Xs lasted 40,000 miles.
Can you tell how much I miss the car?
Great to read a description of how this car drove. I’ve always admired them, with the compressed-’61-Corvair styling and jaunty propped-up engine cover. If I had a roomy daily driver to fall back on, I’d love to have one as a project/weekend car.
Fantastic! Same theory, different country as mine – green also but a different shade
Ahhhh, my first car….
Sometime in 1980 I concluded that was the finest car I can afford with my somewhat limited budget of socialist-country student, so there it was – 1965 NSU Prinz 1000 L. With 43 hp not so powerful as the car featured here, but looking almost the same, minus front oil cooler and wide tires and fenders. And being a DeLuxe (L) model, it had front disk brakes (Paul, I bet you didn’t have disks on your Corvair 🙂
Being produced by NSU license in PRETIS factory in Sarajevo, those cars were pretty common sight in ex Yugoslavia (It was the same factory that later also produced legendary Golf II). Also more powerful versions were available, Prinz 1200 with 65 hp was quite quick for the time, but when pressed hard it was suffering from front end lightfoot-itis and considered dangerous. Common solution was to carry one 50 kg bag of cement in the trunk, or a really big and heavy toolbox.
It was an anti-beetle, and quite modern one. It has rear mounted 4 cilinder air cooled engine, but it was in-line four with overhead cam and (much quieter) radial fan mounted directly to the flywheel. One cool feature was possibility to replace clutch plate without removing engine or gearbox.
I had this car only about one year, what killed it for me was a heavy oil crisis in Yugoslavia at the end of 1980 – Gasoline was rationed to 40 liters per month per car, and with not exactly sparsam Prinz engine, decision was made to let it go.
So I sold it and got myself brand new Rog Marathon 10 speed road bicycle 🙂
There were so rare in the USA, even back in the day. After I bought the first one I’d ever noticed, in 1975, I’d spot one every year or two, no more than that. At times, I’d imagine I had the only one, or it was a figment of my imagination! At a national Treffen meet in Colorado in ’81 or so, there were five cars.
Still, they’d pop up in the strangest places. Watching the classic road trip film “Two-Lane Blacktop,” an orange NSU was shown in line for the start of a race at a Memphis drag strip, just like it belonged there.
I hadn’t seen one in a decade or two when I learned of a Colorado man who built one as a racer. He began local competition last summer, but found it hard to keep up in the smallest class available, for two-liter cars. he’s having a great time in the corners, though!
I bought a Prinz 1000 in 1972 for $135.00 and did some SCCA events. The car eventually had a fire incident and had to be rebuilt/rewired. I rebuilt the car and made some changes including a
tts engine, new carbs and exhaust along with wider wheels. It was major fun in the curves….simple to repair. The biggest challenge was manufacturing parts, (there were few available at the time)
Hi all…There were some wonderfully interesting comments from you all about about the TTS. I bought my first NSU TTS in June of 1967. It was one of 2 left in the U.S. at that time. The co-owner/mechanic of S & S Upland Motors (an NSU dealer in Upland, California) flew to NYC to pick it up and drove it back to Los Angeles (Upland to be exact). He was from Argentina and had never seen most of the U.S.. He also got 35 MPG on his trip!
When he arrived we cut 2 coils off the springs, added Koni shocks and a roll bar and went racing. We soon replaced the Solex carbs (they would starve on corners) with Weber 40DCOE’s. We also added a 4 into 1 exhaust system. From June of 1967 to September of 1968 we went through 6 engines! We found the problem and I ended up winning the Southern Pacific SCCA Championship in 1968,69,70 @71, beating out my friend and most fierce competition, Ed Dempsey and his Fiat Abarth Berlina Corsa 1000. Dempsey’s car had been the SCCA D Sedan National Champion 3 years in a row.
In 1969 I won Pole in D Sedan at the 1969 SCCA National Championships at Daytona International Raceway. I also won that race. As a matter of fact, NSU’s came in 1,2,3 & 4 beating out the Fiat Abarth’s and the Mini’s! I am still in contact with Dick Eisenmann who came in 3rd.
It was great fun and I am now rebuilding the TTS. No more racing though, just weekend drives and car shows.
No surprise that he found a 1200C out around McPherson, KS as I knew of quit a few NSU’s running around Kansas. My Dad had at least a half dozen cars himself. I was given a 70 targa orange 1200TT that had once been owned by John Meek who won the 1973 SCCA Solo2 G stock national championships in. This was when I was in high school and by the late 80’s the car was really in bad shape. I had another car that I dropped a 1000cc TTS motor into, but never got it running right on the street. I didn’t have the TTS transmission and it was geared to tall, plus the camshaft in this motor was to wild for street driving. I would love to have another one and with all the available parts from Germany could build a little hot rod.
I’ve got a Typ110 really complete project and 2 Sport Prinzes. One was updated with a 4 cylinder and disk brakes from a wrecked sedan. I only drove that a short distance and it had a knock. I drove the 2 cylinder (as they came) Sport Prinz from Roseburg to Sacramento with my girlfriend.
Now to find shift bushings and a spot to rebuild 4 cylinder engines.
This 1100TT competed in Targa Newfoundland for several years. (Photo from 2008).
Kees Van Winden was owner/driver with Mel Van Adrichem and Kurtis McPhee as navigators.
Incase anyone is still reading this blog, I’m going to sell my 1969 NSU TTS. Email Racerbill27 at gmail dot com if interested.
Thanks…Bill Allen
My dad was Harvey Hess. He raced a TTS in the Central Division of the SCCA in 1967, but he sold in after the 1968 season. Later in the 70’s he bought over the years 3 or 4 TTS’s which my brother and I raced and did solo 2’s. They were fun cars to drive.
I love all the comments/ memories of the NSU,I was an NSU mechanic in Ireland and owned several models including racing 1000 tt and prinz 3 with a prinz 1000 engine.
I am now living in Australia and have 2 1200tt cars and one prinz4.
These cars were way ahead of other cars of that era and fantastic to drive, nothing could beat their cornering and road holding ability.
They are still being raced in Germany, I would buy a new one today if they were still being made.
Mike.