Comotor SA was a joint venture between NSU and

Citroën Citroën () is a French automobile brand. The "Automobiles Citroën" manufacturing company was founded in March 1919 by André Citroën. Citroën is owned by Stellantis since 2021 and previously was part of the PSA Group after Peugeot acquired ...

, created in

Luxembourg Luxembourg ( ; lb, Lëtzebuerg ; french: link=no, Luxembourg; german: link=no, Luxemburg), officially the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, ; french: link=no, Grand-Duché de Luxembourg ; german: link=no, Großherzogtum Luxemburg is a small lan ...

in April 1967. Its goal was to produce

Wankel engine The Wankel engine (, ) is a type of internal combustion engine using an Eccentric (mechanism), eccentric rotary combustion engine, rotary design to convert pressure into rotating motion. It was invented by German engineer Felix Wankel, and desi ...

s. It followed an earlier, 1964 joint venture of both companies, the Geneva-based Comobil subsidiary, focusing on the development of the engines. Comotor engines were used by the

Citroën M35 The Citroën M35 was a coupé derived from the Ami 8, and equipped with a Wankel engine and a hydropneumatic suspension. The bodies were produced by Heuliez from 1969 to 1971. The longitudinally mounted rotary engine had a nominal capacity of 4 ...

and by the GS Birotor. In 1969 the company purchased a large 850 000 m² plot of land at Altforweiler, half an hour to the east of Luxembourg in

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ger ...

Saarland The Saarland (, ; french: Sarre ) is a state of Germany in the south west of the country. With an area of and population of 990,509 in 2018, it is the smallest German state in area apart from the city-states of Berlin, Bremen, and Hamburg, and ...

in order to build a factory. The venture was hamstrung by technical, reliability, and fuel consumption issues. Although Citroën took a slow and calculated development path, including a two-year 'beta-program' in which 267

prototypes were tested exhaustively by selected customers, rising fuel prices in 1973 nullified market demand for the fuel-thirsty engine. The vast sums that were invested in the Comobil and Comotor joint ventures were major contributors to the bankruptcy of both NSU and

. Henk van Veen of the Netherlands designed the OCR 1000 motorcycle around the Comotor engine. His company manufactured 38 of these motorcycles between 1974 and 1978.

References

Engineering companies of Luxembourg Defunct companies of Luxembourg Wankel engines NSU Motorenwerke Citroën {{motorvehicle-company-stub