NSU Motorcycles

Discussion 2 posts |  Only members can post. Join?

About NSU Motorcycles

The NSU factory at Neckarsulm in Southern Germany produced high quality motorcycles from around 1900 to 1965. In the mid 1950's, after achieving considerable prestige from racing, the management decided that the company's future would be safer if it switched to car production. This, they argued, would keep the company's products in alignment with demand during Germany's post WW2 economic recovery. Consequently, the Max, Prima, Maxi and Quickly died in the early 1960's. This proved to be a bad decission, and ultimately led to the company's downfall. There is still, however, an enthusiastic following for the marque and its engineering heritage. Soichiro Honda travelled to Europe in 1954 to visit a number of motorcycle factories in the UK, Italy and Germany. He then returned to Japan and produced a series of new designs. The Honda Cub, Benly and Dream models were not copies, but exhibited strong NSU influence in their detail design. This suggests that Mr Honda was very impressed with NSU technology, and confirms the importance of NSU in the evolution of the two-wheel industry that we know today. During his 1954 tour, Mr Honda witnessed Werner Haas's Victory in the TT aboard the R22-54 Rennmax, and it was this machine above all that he built his dreams on. He even named his bike the dream when it entered prooduction. I grew up surrounded by NSU's and have wonderful childhood memories of them. I have been striving for years to gather as much knowledge and technical data as possible relating to the Max, Sportmax and Rennmax.