NSU

Season finale:
memories and plans for the future

In the big season finale – round 12 of the 2009 ‘NSU Bergpokal’ (Hillclimb Cup) – a former driver took centre stage of the off-track action: Siegfried Spiess. The six-time German Hillclimb Champion and CEO of the tradition-rich tuning company Spiess Motorenbau GmbH was a sought-after dialogue partner – no matter if it was about the technical area, talking shop or recalling past hillclimb sport eras.

On the sunny first Saturday in October, the striking Spiess logo was flown in the starting area of the 29th International ADAC Hillclimb Mickhausen. 202 competitors participated in the event held at the challenging 2.2-kilometre track located near Augsburg. Some 30,000 motor-racing enthusiasts came and also were keen on witnessing the NSU Bergpokal action – although the battle for the top position had ended prior to the event: Uwe Schindler (Selbitz / NSU 1000c) and Andreas Kuhnert (Remlingen / NSU 1300 TTi) had secured the title and runner-up position respectively early. While Johannes Niedermann from Stein finished third in the 2009 NSU Bergpokal by securing the same result at Mickhausen.

Meanwhile, Spiess had prepared a special honour for Helmut Maier from Passau. Prepared with congratulation documents, presents and a ceremoniously speech, family Spiess surprised their longstanding friend and customer. Maier has been relying on the promising Spiess tuning for 30 years, now, thus being the oldest customer of the Ditzingen based tuning enterprise. And his flame red VW Golf had what it took to also shine at Mickhausen: in Group H, Maier finished runner-up, just half a second behind the winner.

It goes without saying that ‘Siggi’ Spies hadn’t travelled to the season finale without a special goody in his pockets. “We want to re-intensify our hillclimb involvement,” the former hillclimb record champion promised, “Particularly in the NSU area.”

Currently, Spiess are just investigating what they will have to do to be able to quickly provide a diversified product range for the NSU myth.

At the same time, there also is good news for the hillclimb scene’s single-seater drivers. “We want to realise a hillclimb version OPC-challenge engine,” announced the Spiess family. “This engine with its extended runtimes currently is used in the ATS Formula 3 Cup and has proven to be extremely competitive.”

“It’s great that we are re-intensifying our contacts to the hillclimb sport and could gather quite a number of new ideas,” beamed Jürgen Spiess who also witnessed proudly that his father still enjoys enormous popularity, in the scene.