N.S.U. car with Wankel rotary engine, 1965. This is one of the first production cars in the world to use the rotary engine, designed by Felix Wankel and first presented to the public in 1959. It took approximately five years of development to perfect the engine for mass production and the Spider car was eventually released in 1964. The engine’s great advantages were its compact and light weight design which moved the operating elements in a rotary direction resulting in a free revving engine. It was hailed as the next major step forward in automobile design, however certain materials used by NSU in the engine were inappropriate to the stresses applied to them, and the Spider acquired a reputation for unreliability with production ending 1967. To this day piston engines are still predominantly used.