NSU Spider is the lesser-known sports coupe from Germany that wanted to go global with a Wankel engine before Mazda had the guts. He was employed in the sales department of a scientific publishing house in Heidelburg from 1921 to 1926. Felix Wankel was born in 1903 in Lahr in the Schwarzwald in Germany. VW then merged NSU with Auto Union, thus creating Audi NSU Auto Union AG, and finally Audi. The Wankel radial engine is a fascinating beast that features a very clever rearrangement of the four elements of the Otto cycle. Another interesting fact is that the NSU Wankel Spider was one of the last automobiles created by NSU Motorenwerke AG, before being acquired by Volkswagen Group in 1969. The Wankel rotary watch displays time by a rotating motion look like the Wankel engine. We won't be surprised if you aren't aware of this tiny bold German automaker being the maker of the World's first rotary engine-powered production car.Įven a simple google search shows that Mazda Cosmo Sport was the world's first rotary-powered car. Well, with just 2,375 units built, the NSU Spider can't be depicted as a mass-produced car, but they did intend to. Experiment ZR012 is the Wankel engine of watches - New Atlas. But there is actually a very lesser-known rebellious automaker who brought forth a rotary-powered coupe just before Mazda entered the scene. Reliability was clearly one of the major issues in a Wankel engine but the advantages it provided in terms of space-saving and the displacement-power ratio were worth the sacrifice (back then!). What do we generally think of when asked about anything related to a rotary engine? A Mazda right?! In any given angle, it does make sense as Mazda was bold enough to put a rotary engine into a worldwide production car, and even cling onto it for much longer than any of its competitors.