John was a little different in a number of ways good and bad. He was my senator Though never voted for him, meet him a couple times, he was a nice guy but he was different.
Great story! There were a few more Prinz models not mentioned here, including the gorgeous fastback Sport version, and even a convertible Sport with a Wankel rotary engine, as in the Ro80. There are still a few Prinzes in western Canada and BC, where rust is less of a problem than in the centre and east of the continent, and two-lane highways the norm. A nicely restored Sport model was recently for sale near Kamloops, but I waited too long. I nearly bought a Sport and a regular Prinz, on two separate occasions, in Alberta, but both needed a bit too much recommissioning for my skills. The Prinz was also built under licence, in smaller numbers, in Yugoslavia, Argentina, and Egypt. Its successor at Audi was the only slightly larger FWD Audi 50, which was the basis of the VW Polo (smaller sibling of the Golf, never sold in North America). I did own an Audi 50 in Germany for a year. It was marginally better in all regards than the Prinz, but not nearly as dashing as the Sport fastback…
The Prinz came out in 1957, two years before the Corvair, which was essentially an American take on the rear-engined, air-cooled architecture of the Tatra, VW, Porsche, and Prinz, a format that dates back to the 1930s. At most, one could argue that the later Type 4 Prinz looked a bit more like a Corvair than its predecessors had.