There’s a lot going on here in this nicely-saturated photo from a 1966 NSU Prinz 1000 brochure. Based on the equipment, it looks like dad and kid are taking the ol’ rear-engined Prinz out fishing, though why that necessitates a tie for dad and near-lederhosen outfit for kid escapes me. They’re not taking a business meeting with fish, are they?
Or are they? Is that boat the kid is holding actually some sample merchandise they want to try and get fish-community distribution for? Is it a fish-boat, where fish can experience the surface, see the sky, all while remaining close enough to life-giving water? Is that what’s happening here?
Do they need the rods to catch the fish to actually meet with them? Does mom know? Is there booze in that thermos?
So many questions. Love that Prinz, though. Little Euro Corvair with a canted inline-four:
So good.
Little Apolphus of course was the first to go in Willy Wonka and the chocolate factory…
WOW, not quite sure what is most amusing in this article/ comments section, Jason’s take on the family outing, the Dark Side back story, or the fashion critique.
But what about those headlights though? They look awesome!
I think the designers of the BMW 2002 have some questions to answer. The front quarter view at least …
I had read one time that the design of this was in some way related to the Corvair of the era. You can certainly see a resemblance in the front clip and high beltline + sounds like the swing axle too. Anybody have any history or background on this?
At first glance, I thought that kid was holding half a watermelon.
While the boy is happy his parents have made up after their big fight, he is still a little afraid. Now he realizes his hiding spot is about to be discovered and is desperately scanning the surroundings for which direction to run.
Why does this Dutch brochure feature Swedish license plates? If Firma Van Oorschot is within earshot, perhaps they could explain themselves.
So much boat imagery for a car that to me always looked like a bathtub that really wanted to be a refrigerator. Like a transformer for a kid who is like really into appliances.
And that photo was taken when a picnic basket was just a picnic basket, and people dressed wrong for everything.
Are we gonna get notifications for replies and stuff like that?
I sure hope so. Also, thanks for coming back, finding the article, and scanning through to read this.
Bwahahah! Same to you, friend.
One Benjamin Franklin says he’s gonna drop that kid at the nearest orphanage or fire station, then proceed to the lake high up in the mountains for some very quiet time.
With the wife still in tow?
That would defeat the purpose entirely.
I’ve had the luck to drive the predecessor of these, a Prinz 4.
It was very advanced mechanically, especially compared to the Eastern Block stuff we had back then.
There was no timing chain or belt or external electric starter. It had a weird connecting rod for driving the cam, a bit like the coupling rods you see on steam locomotives.
And for electric start, it had a starter/generator combo called the dynastart.
A bit like Honda’s IMA much later – without the assist feature.
And a rear independent suspension, when most other cars had solid axles.
The engine had an unique sound, it started silently and had very linear power.
The entire car had really great build quality and precise handling.
It had to be 30+ years old even back then, and not a single rattle.
I’ll take a solid rear axle over swing axle independent rear suspension like this NSU (and many, many other European economy cars up through the 70s) had every day -swing axles caused way too much camber change as the suspension moves, and in the worst case would ‘fold under’ going over a hump, dramatically increasing the chances of a rollover if you happened to be unlucky enough to be going around a turn at the same time.
As I’ve grown older I’m understanding more and more that the automotive journalists in the print rags I used to read obsessively have a lot to answer for – their take that ‘more valves, more cams, more links, more European’ is always better is just not true, but it influenced generations of car enthusiasts, and engineers.
The reality is that, while a *really good* independent suspension (to get back to the current case) will indeed by better than a *really good* solid axle, very few products ever get refined to that level, and there is a lot of overlap – even a super simple leaf-sprung solid axle is much better (certainly safer!) than the swing axle setups in these econoboxes.
There was definitely a lot of “sell them to the public and see what happens” type of research and development done in the late sixties and all through the seventies. That’s why the Pinto was so important. The danger was a bit over hyped, but people understand “explosions bad” whereas faulty suspension dynamics gets technical right away, and it’s harder to be afraid of something you don’t understand. Luckily most of this was addressed by the early eighties, and we got some decently reliable cars for a change (random dubious fuel management aside)
By the looks of the cutaway, these were a semi-trailing arm setup, which shouldn’t really have that issue, or at least not as much? might be wrong, though.
100% sure there’s booze in that thermos.
was literally going to say the same thing word for word.
See how the wife is already turning away? Her body language is undeniable. The husband is a drunk and the wife is placating him with that half-hearted smile and she simply can’t wait until he drops dead so she can take her son back home to her family in Czechoslovakia.
Oddly specific, hmmm…..;)
The tie is a weird piece of clothing. It went from a Croatian Mercenary uniform piece to something that men wore every damn day. It still hangs on like some vestigial organ of fashion. Completely useless, can get you in trouble if it gets caught on something but almost every grown male has one.
https://moderntie.com/blogs/news/the-history-and-evolution-of-mens-neckties
A weird piece of history. Thanks for posting that.
So much so that Rimac use a necktie motif on their cars:
https://www.rimac-automobili.com/nevera/design/?attachment-id=8529&slide=0&color=gunpowder_grey
I’ve always liked the perhaps apocryphal but still cool story that suits are the distant descendants of the tailored soft undergarments a nobleman would wear under his armor.
It’s true. There’s a blog for every fetish!