During my recent trip to Germany, I had the opportunity to see some amazing motorcycle collections - public, private, and hidden. These 'secret spy photos' of a not-open-to-the-public NSU collection were only possible via access granted by my gracious hosts.
My friend Wolfgang Schneider (on the left, behind a Walter Moore-designed 'Bullus' ohc NSU) kept me occupied for a few days at Hockenheim and surrounding areas, and had arranged for a visit with Ralph Plagmann (right in the photo), who heads the NSU department at the Audi factory in Neckarsulm (Audi, formerly Auto-Union, purchased NSU in 1969, but no 'fifth ring' was added to their logo...). The Audi factory, which consists of a lot of small and large buildings, is well integrated into the town somehow, and not shunted to the outskirts. My goal in this visit was to secure the loan of a few 'gems' from the Audi collection for next year's Legend of the Motorcycle Concours - NSU is one of the featured marques (the other is Indian), and as far as I know, there are no ex-Works racing NSUs in the States. Thus, if any of these amazing machines is to be on display at the Legends, a few European collections will have to stretch across the pond. The Legends has always had high-end auto sponsorship (those Bentleys looked pretty good on the grass), and the rationale for Audi to sponsor such a trip has to be 'it's good advertising, Audi sells a lot of cars in CA...'.
Ralph Plagmann didn't need much convincing, as he is fully committed to the NSU marque, but there are higher-ups at Audi who have yet to see the Legends as a perfect venue to display a few of their motorcycles, while garnering a little positive glow for their auto sales.
Ralph led Wolfgang and myself into a warehouse which isn't open to the public, housing the collection of NSU road and racing motorcycles, and a few other things like the Kettenkraftrad (that freakish mating of a motorcycle and a tank - see pic), and a
'drone' waterski boat - controlled by the skier like a motorcycle, from very long handlebars (no, it didn't sell - see photo, it looks like a prop from 'The Prisoner'). 
And I'm making this all sound very academic; actually I was in a state of high anxiety, as I was VERY excited to see this collection, and my camera was dead as a doornail! So, we walked into this big warehouse full of impossibly cool motorcycles, but I don't have a camera, as my battery charger didn't like the change from 110v to 220v in Europe... and there is no way I can see this collection and NOT take photos. I remembered my US cell phone sitting in the car, so I ran and grabbed it and took 100 photos with the worst camera in the world....BUT I got the shots!
Lined up are a bunch of road bikes, from the 'teens to the 60's, lightweights and big v-twins, plus spare car and motorcycle engines on shelves, an example of the first NSU knitting machine from the late 1800's, all sorts of stuff.... but the racing bikes caught my eye... the NSU Rennmax and Rennfox are, in my humble opinion, on a very short list of the most beautiful bikes ever ever. Hand hammered aluminum bodywork and fenders, sculpted to fit a crouching human body, plus those perfectly proportioned engines. Breathtaking.
Standing in one corner was the Baumm III streamlined 'flying hammock', so called as the rider lays down in it and steers feet-forward; apparently it was incredibly stable, but looks like a
wingless 50's jet. This particular machine was used in a fuel-economy test (1 liter/100km) and was road legal! The lower photos shows a plexiglass cover on the 'tail', which houses a stop and taillamp. Flaps on the sides of the cockpit open to allow the rider's legs to prop the machine at a stop. This is a fully water-and-weatherproof vehicle, and was a prototype for possible commercial development. A forerunner of the Peraves 'Eco' and Monotracer enclosed motorcycles. Given the extremely small output and precarious finances of the Peraves project, NSU was correct to put this one aside.I got to pull the tarps off many of these machines while Wolfie and Ralph talked incessantly about other things - Wolfgang was the restorer of many of the machines present, so the two of them had much catching up to do, and I was left alone to do as I wished.
Lined up with the Rennmaxes was the remains of the fearsome 4-cyl dohc NSU racer, only the engine was missing. 'Where is the engine?' I interrupted, and Ralph looked a bit puzzled - they searched the warehouse, but no engine. 'It's in a blue box, probably at our other location' in another town. Too bad, I would have really liked to have seen it. See the photos of the front wheel and forks - serious stuff.
On the way out, Wolfie insisted we open a roll-up garage door outside - and in a little garage with a custom-built trailer sat the 1956 'Delphin III', the world record breaking streamliner... amazing. To see this historic machine in person after writing about it just the week prior (on the blog) was a real treat. There are two of these machines - one sits in the Deutsches Museum in Munich, with the original aluminum fairing but a 'hollow' engine, while the Audi machine has a fiberglass fairing and working supercharged 500cc dohc engine. Heinz Hertz made a replica of this machine on his 50-year Anniversary trip to Bonneville (in 2006) to commemorate his father's World Record in the original Delphin III.
We went back to Ralph's office so I could buy some books ('some'; I now own every book in print about NSU, plus a groovy knit blue NSU sweater, very Old School). As I wanted Everything, we had to go into the basement with a secretary to dig up all these books from storage (the NSU office isn't really set up for retail), and while they were finding books and boxing them up, I was snooping around in this basement, and found a groovy old NSU telephone from the '30's on a shelf, and a lot of other unusual relics. Around a corner I spied a row of NSU bicycles beside a stack of boxes.... Wooden boxes, old ones, and one is blue with 'NSU' in white... with two smaller boxes with 'Spares for the TT', in English!
'Wolfgang I found the Four-Cylinder engine!' And sure enough, we opened it up, and there was the thing itself. Awesome... what a kick to dig around in somebody else's basement! Many pix taken, and Wolfie and I took our leave for another part of town, with him hoping we can bring the record-breaker streamliner to CA next May... which would be COOL.
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