Audi Trained Engineers By Having Them Restomod A 52-Year-Old NSU Prinz

Next time you make a big career move and have to start training, onboarding or whatever the technical term your future employer uses, ask yourself: Does my regimen include, in any form, assisting in the restoration and electrification of a half-century-old, rear-engine German coupe? If the answer is “no,” your job, despite whatever perks it may entail, is not as cool as that of an Audi apprentice.

Over the weekend, a group of 12 Audi trainees across various departments — automotive mechatronics, bodywork, vehicle construction mechanics and painting — unveiled a coupe called the EP4 that looks absolutely nothing like any product out of Ingolstadt in 50 years. That’s because it actually started life as an NSU Prinz 4L, a car that was produced at Audi’s Neckarsulm site back when Volkswagen folded NSU into its operations in 1969.

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The original Prinz 4 moved thanks to an air-cooled, two-cylinder engine out back. Coupled with its design, many drew comparisons to the Corvair, only of course, the Prinz was on a much smaller scale. This engine provided about 30 horsepower, but Audi’s engineers swapped it out for a 240-hp motor pulled from an E-Tron, fed power from batteries out of a plug-in-hybrid Q7.