Sunday, August 05, 2012

A rare gem, shared by Dep-O Magazine... the NSU Prinz owners manual "tips"


What do you do when you buy any kind of project these days? You get onto eBay. And when I searched for ‘NSU Prinz’, ‘Owners’ Handbook’ popped up. Yes, it might be useful. But more importantly, owning a car is never enough – you have to own loads of related stuff as well (like the enamel mug, two workshop manuals and a selection of keyrings and badges which are now dotted around the office shelves…)

The manual has proved to be an absolute gem. It belongs to a different age completely, one where manufacturers trusted their customers with their own cars. Where modern manuals will tell you how to operate the central locking and where to put the ignition key but will then gently infer that the warranty will be invalid and legal action will swiftly follow even half-hearted attempts to open the bonnet, the Prinz manual just stops short of telling you how to fully disassemble and re-assemble the whole car using just a spoon and a ball of hairy string. And it does it all with a superb sense of humour. It’s actually funny.

Tips From NSU, reproduced here for your enjoyment. Some still make perfect good sense, some would cause many in this Health & Safety obsessed world to choke on their decaf Frappucino. Which is no bad thing. Don’t miss tips No.2, 16, and 18. Strangely, apart from giving me a good chuckle, the manual and the attitude it conveys has made me warm to the car enormously. I like NSU more because of it, it makes me sorry that they’re not still around making their wonderfully over-engineered cars. And as if I needed it, gives me one more reason to get the orange beast back on the road.

 Awesome find! read the entire NSU purchase situation, from which this was excerpted
http://www.dep-o.co.uk/features/in-manual-our-ebay-gem-of-the-month/

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