NSU Delphin III


The NSU Delphin III streamliner motorcycle set the motorcycle land speed record in 1956. Wilhelm Herz rode the machine to at Bonneville Speedway in Utah, to break 200 mph for the first time. Its fairing, designed in a wind tunnel at University of Stuttgart, gave it a drag coefficient of 0.19. The same engine powered Herz to a 1951 world speed record, with a less efficient frame/fairing, the Delphin I. The engine used an unusual rotary supercharger related to NSU's eventual development of the Wankel engine. In the supercharger, both a trochoidal inner rotor and epitrochoidal outer rotor spun around a stationary shaft.