NSU Spider
NSU Motorenwerke
NSU Motorenwerke
This is the catalogue record of the NSU Spider, one of 20 models NSU Motorenwerke has placed in the historical record and one of more than seventeen thousand cars the MotorJury library tracks. The record places its introduction in 1963. The photography on this page is hotlinked from Wikimedia Commons under an open licence, with the photographer credited on every frame.
To read the NSU Spider properly it helps to place it in its decade. The 1960s were the decade of the pony car, the mid-engined revolution and the birth of the modern hot hatchback's ancestors — engineering advanced faster than in any decade before it. Any car launched into that world was shaped by it — by what materials, engineering and regulation allowed, and by what buyers of the day demanded. Its direct contemporaries in this catalogue, introduced within three years of it, include the Maserati Maserati Quattroporte, the Aston Martin Aston Martin DB5, the Buick Buick Riviera — the cars a buyer of the period would actually have cross-shopped.
On paper, the NSU Spider reads like this: the record lists its engine as 1.0 L KKM 502 (Wankel); kerb weight is recorded at 700 kg / (Measurements approximate); top speed is given as 148 km/h; drive goes through 4-speed all-synchromesh manual; the layout is RR layout. Every figure above is a manufacturer specification carried by the Wikipedia infobox or the open Wikidata record for this model — nothing on this page is estimated, and where a source is silent the row simply does not appear.
Within NSU Motorenwerke's own catalogue the NSU Spider sits alongside the NSU 10/30 hp, the NSU 1000, the NSU 5/15 PS, the NSU 6/18 hp. The record names the successor = as its predecessor and the body_style = 2-door cabriolet as its successor, fixing its place in the model line's chronology. Design is credited to Bertone. Assembly is recorded at West Germany: Neckarsulm.
This library is generated, verified and rebuilt from the open record on every deploy. The catalogue skeleton comes from Wikidata, specifications from Wikipedia's infoboxes under CC BY-SA, photography from Wikimedia Commons under each file's own licence, and the ownership data from United States federal safety records. Nothing is written by hand and nothing is invented: every fact on this page traces to a public source, and every page is rebuilt nightly as those sources improve. Errors in the source record will appear here too — and disappear the night the source is corrected.
Most car databases stop at series production. This one deliberately does not, because concept cars, racing specials and cancelled prototypes are where the industry thinks out loud — the ideas tested in public years before they reach a showroom. Holding them beside the production cars they inspired makes the lineage legible: nearly every landmark road car in this library has a concept ancestor somewhere in the catalogue, and the connections run through the era links on every page.
The catalogue records what the NSU Spider was; the ownership database records what it is like to own. MotorJury computes a verdict for every model year the United States federal record covers — complaints, recalls, real economy — refreshed nightly, with no opinions involved. If this car reached the American market, its verdicts are in there.
Specifications come from the Wikipedia infobox for this model (CC BY-SA) and the open Wikidata record, and are shown only where a source actually carries them — nothing here is estimated. Figures are manufacturer specifications, not measured results.
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Ownership verdicts are computed from NHTSA complaint and recall records plus EPA economy data, re-priced for your country. Verdicts are published per model year as the data is ingested — browse them live, or open the true-cost calculator to price any year yourself.
Contemporaries from other marques, introduced within three years of this car.