Is there an automotive fanatic who dislikes Jay Leno? Doesn’t exist! Who can resist a good-humored man who has the assets to construct an eclectic assortment all of us dream about?

However, for all the variability in Jay’s assortment, few Individuals might be accustomed to the NSU that’s on the beneath video. A German producer that was as soon as the world’s largest producer of bikes, NSU has the excellence of constructing the primary manufacturing vehicle powered by the Wankel rotary engine: the 1964-67 Spider. Designed by Bertone, the NSU Spider was a convertible of the extra conventionally powered NSU Sport Prinz coupe. The only-rotor Wankel measured 996cc and provided between 50-54 horsepower relying on when it was constructed. Nonetheless, for all its intelligent packaging and new-fangled engineering, the Wankel skilled teething issues and fought a status for unreliability.

NSU tried once more with the Citroen-esque 1968-77 Ro 80, this one a twin-rotor Wankel, however the firm was left in a weak place and Volkswagen purchased the corporate in 1969 and merged it with Auto Union (which had beforehand entered the American market within the Nineteen Fifties with its two-stroke sedans) to create what we now know as Audi.

And the Wankel? A number of producers had been seduced by it however solely Mazda actually made the funding, even managing to type out its teething issues and discovering American success in a sequence of sedans. The Wankel proved itself to be a fuel guzzler in a time when Individuals had been pining for gasoline effectivity, so the Wankel’s availability developed right into a devoted sports activities automotive that everybody is aware of because the RX-7 . . . however that’s for an additional story.

The above video has Leno driving round Burbank and neighborhood the place he extols the virtues of the car that began all of it — get pleasure from!