In the past of the Four Rings there are not only the two wheels of the historic Nsu Motorrad (born in 1898 after the production of bicycles) or of the more recent Ducati, which entered the Group in 2012. The annals of Audi, which originates precisely from the Nsu of Neckarsulm, also tell of an unusual and little-known production under license of the Lambretta.
The famous Innocenti scooter made its debut on the roads of Germany in 1950 as a solution to the problem of the wave of layoffs when the Neckarsulm plant stopped repairing vehicles for the US army stationed there.
Luckily Nsu signed a licensing agreement with Innocenti and started building the Lambretta right in 1950 keeping the name that referred to its origins in the Milanese district of Lambrate. In the years that the Lambretta was built in Neckarsulm, Nsu launched two variants. Until 1954, a 123 cc and 4.5 HP version with a maximum speed of 70 km/h and, from 1954 onwards, the 150 cc 6.2 HP version with a maximum speed of 81 km/h. Both variants ran on a single-cylinder, mixture-fed two-stroke engine.
Between 1950 and 1956, around 117,000 examples of the Lambretta 125 and 150 were built in Germany. They were available in four colours: lime green, beige, medium gray and light grey. When the licensing agreement with Innocenti expired – as expected – in 1956, however, Nsu decided to continue building scooters as an in-house development that could also be sold in other markets. The Italian Lambretta thus became Nsu Prima, available in four variants. When scooter production in Neckarsulm ended in 1964, a total of 160,000 Prima units had come off those lines. And this stop also marked the end of scooter production in Neckarsulm.
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Source: Ansa
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