Great article. Thanks!
Although to be fair, Mazda's efforts were well under way by the time the NSU Spider was introduced.
From an article at hemmings.com:
"For all its pioneering work, NSU was nearly beaten out of the gate by a company that had bought the rights to its design. In the summer of 1963, NSU heard that Mazda was planning to show its rotary-powered Cosmo at the Frankfurt Auto Show that fall. Alarmed, the German automaker fired off a letter asserting that the Japanese company had no contractual rights to display the new technology in Europe. In a frosty reply, Mazda said there must have been some misunderstanding, because it intended to launch the Cosmo at the Tokyo Motor Show one month later."
