Trabant: The East German car remains iconic | Hacker News Reader

Trabant: The East German car remains iconic

dw.com

113 pointsTomte102 comments

A Texas oil man heard that there were cars in East Germany so popular that buyers had to wait years to take delivery of one. He immediately sent a check to the Trabi factory.

The directors, sensing a propaganda coup in the making, arranged to send him the very next car off the line.

Two weeks later the oil man was in a bar, speaking with some friends.

“Ah ordered me one o’ them Trabis them folks over there in East Germany wait 12 years to get,” he drawled.

“And you know what? Them East Germans are so efficient. Wah, just last week they sent me over a little plastic model so I can know what to expect!”

(Taken from http://www.nickselby.com/2013/08/25/and-now-a-little-trabant...)

That's a somewhat common joke in East Germany as well (at least it was in the 80s and 90s). Typically it is a buyer from West Germany though.

Toilet paper in the eastern block always was 2 layer, cause one copy of every shit goes to moscow.

Results for international tonsil-removal competition: USA 2 minutes, France 1 minute, East Germany 10 hours. (You see in East Germany you can’t open your mouth so they had to go in the other way)

Toilet paper in the eastern block always was rough, to make even the last ass get red.

As a student of German I was introduced to the Trabi through jokes, e.g., "How do you double the value of your Trabi? Fill it with gasoline! Why does a Trabi have a rear defroster? To keep your hands warm while pushing it!" etc. I'm sure that these are retreads from any car model you please, but they were novel to me as a high schooler.

"Longest car in the world at 20m. 2m car, 18m smoke"

The photo gallery shows the boring Wartburg 353 with typical East German "non-design", but East German engineers could also build beautiful cars, at least in the early days:

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wartburg_313

The 313 is sitting in some kind of uncanny valley for me. It’s close enough to good looking that the oddities really stand out.

True, I guess that's mainly because it had to share parts with the 311 model. Still it's by far the most elegant car made in East Germany.

For a really odd looking car, check out the Melkus ;)

It actually looks great here in the photos, but in reality some things look very odd (also because it was a bit like a Frankenstein car, using parts from regular East German cars):

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melkus_RS_1000

> For a really odd looking car, check out the Melkus

My response: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23071521

It looks like a Ferrari Dino 206/246 that's been through some photoshop warping. And it has 68bhp. Heh.

Something between that and a Lamborghini Miura

It looks like a low-effort copy of a Karmann Ghia to me. It's even got the tilted logo on the bottom right of the trunk lid:

Karmann Ghia: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/e8/6d/68/e86d681f64a00ae25e4b...

Wartburg: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1a/Wartburg...

My father worked at Volkswagen when the Berlin wall fell. Volkswagen considered a cooperation with Sachsenring (the producer of the Trabant cars) and my father's team had the task to find ways to keep the production of the Trabant running until a line for a new car could be set up at the Factory in Zwickau. They held a competition for artists to style the Trabant's body so it could become something like a lifestyle car. My father asked me about the opinion on the designs and I remember that some were quite cute, but not enough to make that outdated car attractive for buyers.

Anyway, it was soon decided that the technology of the Trabant was already so far behind that nobody wanted to buy the Trabant anymore and keeping up the production made no sense economically or ecologically. But I can assure you, they tried and Volkswagen's top management actually was a little bit idealistic about this.

I'm Hungarian, born in '81, so I grew up around Trabis, Wartburgs, Skodas, Moskvitch, Ladas. My mom's first car was a Trabant. At some point in the 80s we moved to W-Germany for a few years and we took the Trabant, it was not a good look (we were living in Boeblingen, near Stuttgart, location of the Porsche HQ).

The magic of social and geographic mobility and the tech boom: today, 30 years later, I live in Dubai, where anything below V8 is boring, and my wife drives a Porsche, but really we should stop driving ICEs altogether.

> we were living in Boeblingen, near Stuttgart

Grew up in Herrenberg (a few kilometers from Böblingen). When neighbors learned that my father was thinking of replacing his old Audi someone put a Mercedes calendar on our doorstep. Swabians are very particular with their cars.

My father grew up in Herrenberg (on "Auf'm Bildkäppele") and has never driven anything but Mercedes.

That's funny, I grew up about 100m away. Small world. :-)

Tübingen here... and working in Böblingen (or nowadays "for a company located in Böblingen").

Cool. When you commuted did you take the Ammertalbahn and S-Bahn, or did you drive? There was no high school in Herrenberg after the war, so my dad took the train to Tübingen every day and had to cross between the French and American zones of occupation.

Took the Ammertalbahn for a while, but it was extremely unreliable due to the known issues, so I switched to cycling (2x35km) which crazily turned out to be faster, more reliable and benefitial for my health as well.

There is a Mercedes research centre in Böblingen.

While I don't know how manufacturing is distributed today, historically the primary Mercedes production facility has been in Sindelfingen which is adjacent to Böblingen.

I grew up in East Germany, but i don't have any kind words to say about the Trabant; a small two-stroke engine (all East German engines were two stroke engines) that was quite bad to the environment (and to the poor guys who were frequently sick with some kind of asthma), what's so cool about that? (and the Chassis was made of pressed papier-mache, not even plastic; i have never seen one burning, but it would have been burning like a match)

I have seen one burning. On a hillside in (then) Czechoslovakia. The trabi overheated, then caught flame. Drivers got out, but the car was standing there, burning. We could not back up, because of a line of cars, trucks buses behind us who all were stuck on the very windy road.

Indeed it burned "like a match", with thick black smoke. When the breaks burned through it rolled downhill, towards us, scary AF. Luckily it did not hit us nor the car in front of us, but passed a few meters and ended in a ditch, below the road. Where it exploded: almost like in the movies; just more black smoke. No-one was hurt.

I was 12 or 13, but I remember the burning trabi like it was yesterday. I can almost feel the heat and smell the burning plastic, when I think of it.

The Trabant was made of Duroplast.

(1) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duroplast

I’ve seen one burning in the early nineties, it was abandoned and me and some friends lit it on fire… the paint bubbled up in some unhealthy ways on those paper parts. We pissed on it to put it out, be we failed. Got out there with our bikes pretty quick and later it was put out by the local fire brigade. :)

The body panels are neither plain plastic nor paper-based, but more akin to Bakelite:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duroplast

The cardboard thing was more like a joke because (I guess) when banging against the panels it sounded like a cardboard box :)

Another popular name for the Trabant was 'Rennpappe' - 'racing cardboard'; but you are right, i mixed things up a bit.

The chap running the Aging Wheels YouTube channel owns one of these and has done some great videos about driving and maintaining it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npMKIUTa3uI

> Volkswagen settled in Zwickau, Chemnitz and Eisenach and developed the Golf and Polo models there. Opel has been producing cars there since 1992, along with numerous new suppliers that call Saxony, Thuringia and Saxony-Anhalt their home.

The author mixed something up there. VW only settled in Zwickau and Chemnitz, which were involved in Trabant production. However VW neither settled in Eisenach nor was there anything regarding the production of Trabant going on in Eisenach. Instead the "VEB Automobilwerk Eisenach" produced the "Wartburg" [0], another famous car in GDR in Eisenach and after the reunification Opel established a factory there [1].

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wartburg_(marque)

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opel_Eisenach

To supplement this: Eisenach was the location of one of the early car manufacturers of Germany.[1] It was BMW that bought the factory in 1928. After WW2 it was nationalized. The factory was closed in 1991. The Opel factory was not a direct successor of it. However, the availbility of skilled workers from the old factory influenced the dicision to establish a new factory there.

[1] Here the picture of a "Wartburg" from 1898: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wartburg-Motorwagen#/media/Dat...

I had the opportunity to tour in a Trabant once in Krakow (though https://www.crazyguides.com/cars/ - no affiliation, just happened to be their customer).

It is ultimately an interesting car where you can mend quite a lot by yourself, which I think could be useful when touring some remote places (of which Krakow is of not one - a fantastic city BTW)

In early 2000s in Poland, we had a Trabant combi in our family, from the last 1990-91 batch (with a 4-stroke VW Polo 1.1L engine). Apart from funny look, I remember it as a much better and more solid car than other cars available at that price range at the time! Plus, few of cheap cars back then had a spacious combi version. (Other, much popular low-end cars back then being trunk-less Fiat 126p, and Fiat Cinquecento/Seicento)

In the mid 90s my parents and me were having a 2-day trip from eastern part of Germany to Paris in a "Trabbi". It was loud as hell inside the car. And still, I don't know why, I really liked this trip and like the look of this car a lot.

One unbeatable feature of Trabant was that it cost only around $5000 in today's money.

It also seems quite capable: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WRQcJ0QnTU

Wikipedia says there was a 10 year wait list? Seems worth mentioning when discussing the purchase price.

The typical procedure was to order one "just in case", because even if you don't need it for yourself you can still sell it "used" for a nice profit. My father for instance "traded" his new Trabant for a used Volga M21, which was a much bigger but also older Soviet car (and later sold this Volga to a Russian soldier returning back to the motherland, and "upgraded" to a used Shiguli, aka Lada 1500 - which was a really fine car considering the "competition" :)

Romanian here, there were Trabants around here too but I always viewed as somewhat exotic. Typical car was built locally: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dacia_1300

Also had to wait for years to buy one. In fact you had to pay it upfront and then maybe in 5 years you'd get it.

I lived in Germany when the wall came down. For a while after this, it was common to see Trabant debris on the side of the autobahn. The Trabant had a very low top speed, and the East German drivers weren't aware of the fast-lane etiquette on the autobahn, so they would get rear-ended quite often.

"According to the Federal Motor Transport Authority, around 34,500 Trabants were registered in Germany at the beginning of 2019."

That's surprising to me, as I recall the TÜV vehicle inspection requirements were pretty strict. I guess they have some kind of exemption for hobbyist/antique vehicles?

I had a near miss as a passenger on the autobahn from Bazel to Karlsruhe. It is only two lanes, the car I was in was doing about 200km/h, a Trabant decided to try to overtake a truck with a Porsche rapidly closing on us from behind.

Welcome to the German Autobahn!

Having a classic vehicle in Germany, a 1982 V8 Range Rover, I can elaborate on that. There are no exceptions for hobby or classic cars. Quite the opposite, in case you want the tax exemption and (limited annual millage) insurance benefits, the TÜV is quite strict before handing out the relevant certification (Paragraph 21 if memory serves well). Statistics show that these kind of cars have overall less defects during examination than others. I guess because enthusiasts take good care of their hobby cars, I certainly do. More so than our second, now rather redundant, daily driver.

And being easy to work on, Trabis are thankful hobbyist cars.

Makes sense for your Range Rover, but Trabants are arguably not road-worthy. Bakelite-like brittle plastic body, 20+ second 0-60 times, no rear seat belts, 26hp smoky 2-stroke, etc.

Thing is, classic cars are examined based on the year of make requirements. So a Trabant, or any other car from that period, has to fulfill the "old" requirements. Seat belts, if not part of the original roadworthiness certification, are not required. Same goes for emissions. And since Trabants were street legal back the day, they still are today. I would argue those that are around are even safer because of better maintenance and replacement part quality.

Heh, for a similar Soviet car, Zaporozhets, the joke was that you can drive it on the autobahn as long as you first roll it down a big mountain, to get to the requisite speed.

I'm from West-Germany and have driven a Trabant myself (only twice though). This video, titled "The Trabant Was an Awful Car Made By Communists" from Doug De Muro sums it up quite nicely imo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=No1-4GsQa-g ;-)

The fact that they still sold this dangerous and noisy contraption in the late eighties (you even had to wait years to get one), when Audi released the V8 (4C) and Mercedes was about to end production for the S-Class W126, tells you a lot about how broken transportation was in East-Germany.

I think it's worth appreciating the resource constraints under which the Trabant was developed. The questionable technical choices weren't made out of socialist incompetence but because certain materials were hard to come by and practically every citizen was eligible to request one.

While the Western Allies quickly changed their post-war plans to build up Germany as a military base against the Soviet Union for the impending Cold War and the US offered Germany loans for their surplus resources, the Soviet Union initially sought to deindustrialize Germany for reparations to rebuild its own infrastructure that had faced massive destruction by Germany throughout the war.

Additionally unlike the Western Allies, the Soviet Union had only just barely experienced its own industrial revolution and was still largely agrarian until it shifted gears to produce for war. And while an important strategic partner, East Germany spent most of its existence as a puppet state, stuck between producing commodities for its own population, producing export goods that could only be sold at a massive loss and supporting the Soviet side of the Cold War while facing constant provocations from NATO and the US.

In fact, the most valuable "export" for East Germany were West German spies and "collaborators", whom the West German government routinely paid large ransoms for.

EDIT: Deleted the last paragraph speculating about what might have happened if East Germany had continued to exist because that's probably off-topic and requires a more thorough understanding of late East German politics.

EDIT2: To clarify, I'm mostly pointing these things out because the video the parent posted is infuriatingly light on details while just constantly mocking obvious UX or quality issues. The presenter doesn't seem to know much about the car itself and instead tries to give a strained Jeremy Clarkson impression. There's no historical context given (other than "it's a communist car") and it barely even describes any technical aspects other than what would be obvious to any layperson. Contrast this with this Forgotten Weapons video about a horrible mess of a gun that ruined the company that made it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9bULArrKs4

"Constant provocations from NATO and the US"? The following wiki article goes into great depth on the insane amount of time and money the DDR invested in making sure that its citizens could not escape:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortifications_of_the_inner_Ge...

Oh, sorry, I meant "unannounced military drills occasionally violating Soviet airspace and waters".

I'm not sure what the fact that the DDR was an authoritarian police state that routinely incarcerated and tortured citizens accused of collaboration, shot anyone trying to illegally cross the border into the West, and employed ordinary citizens to keep taps on each other under constant paranoia of collaboration has to do with this, though. There's a reason I put "collaborators" in scare quotes. These things are well-known, even outside Germany.

I didn't say the DDR was good. I said it faced extreme resource constraints and that it was under constant pressure from Moscow, while also trying to provide commodity goods to every citizen. "Stupid communists built bad cars" isn't a very interesting or informed take, though.

Well Audi V8 and Mercedes S klasse are not exactly people's cars.

How different is pricing in Germany for an MB, BMW or VAG product? Are those vehicles much cheaper in DE or is the income “floor” much higher relatively to North America?

Last time I checked, these brands are more expensive in Germany than the US. They are even cheaper in other EU countries, to the point exporting the papers to have them registered in a third EU country is a thing. These re-imports are usually a good deal.

Having owned BMWs in both Europe and the US, I can definitely attest to the much lower cost - both absolute and as a proportion of software developer income - in the US of an equivalent model (though ten model years apart). That said, I believe the US models are made here and not in Germany.

If I remember well, the X5 (?) sold in Europe is produced in the US as well.

Trabant motor is a 2-stroke engine. Oil is mixed with the fuel on the tank and the fuel tank is positioned above the engine so they flow through gravity. This means only a single filter for fuel and oil is used and no need for fuel or oil pump. A very durable configuration. They are also very easy to repair. These features made Trabant such a durable car that owners eventually abandoned them in working condition instead of selling or scraping.

It could be even more durable if the engine was a 2-stroke valve-less design. But I don't know of any car that used such engine.

Disregarding the practical aspects and all nostalgia: All that unburnt fuel and oil vapor from the 2 stroke was a major ecological and health hazard and I‘m glad they‘re long gone.

Every time a Trabbi Safari passes by me around Checkpoint Charlie, the smell makes me almost want to puke instantly.

I can‘t even imagine by now how East Berlin must have smelled 40 years ago and what toll it must have taken on the health of residents.

Yeah, durable but certainly pollutant and unhealthy.

Two strokes are still in use. Small scooters use them and some competition enduro motorcycles up to 250cc as well.

Nothing that needs to meet emission standards, though.

Just throw leaded fuel in the mix. I know my classic V8 is definitely more smelly than anything modern. And it was a rather modern V8, despite double carbs is already almost de-doxed.

Other iconic vehicles from the GDR are the motorbikes from Simson, especially the "Schwalbe".[1][2] After the reunification there were even fan clubs in western Germany.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simson_(company) [2] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simson_Schwalbe (in German)

That's mostly because they are exempt from the 45kph limit of 50cc engines that you can drive at 15 y/o with an AM license. Simsons are allowed to drive 60kph.

Yes iconic. It has the iconic sound of a lawnmower.

Meanwhile the west had BMWs. Tells a lot about how things were.

At the time when production started in the 50's and 60's, the East German cars weren't all that bad compared to the rest of the world (especially if you compare to anything else than West Germany, which after all built the best high-end cars in the world). The problem was that the East German economy quickly went downhill starting in the late 60's, and there was no will, and no resources to bring new cars into production.

For instance, East Germany had almost invented the VW Golf class of cars if the engineers had their way, but such innovations were blocked by the "higher ups":

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wartburg_(Automarke)#Wartburg_...

> had almost invented the VW Golf class of cars if the engineers had their way, but such developments were blocked by the "higher ups"

Interesting. But yes, that's what you get when you have politicians making decisions about products and market (doesn't apply only to Eastern countries and doesn't apply only to governmental politicians - think office politics/people "falling up").

> governmental politicians

Does “politician” just mean “person who makes decisions for reasons I don't like” to you? Politicians can also make good decisions.

I am envious of the fact that you live in a world where politicians make good decisions.

I can't seriously engage with someone who believes politics never results in anything positive.

Some examples of positive behavior of politicians will be apreciated.

I'm sure there are plenty of examples of good coming out of politics, all across the world. The evil politician stereotype is neither new nor completely accurate. I'd assume that much depends on the system in which the politician in question operates. Some systems easily lend themselves to abuse and corruption, and others are slightly more robust. In a word, it's complicated :)

There is no incentive for a politician to make good decisions for her constituents. The politician is incentivized to make decisions good for himself (of course), his party or for his reelection.

Re-election decisions are usually populist. Sometimes they are good for the people but most often they are harmful on the long run.

Seldom you get a politician like Reagan or Thatcher who made unpopular decisions great for their country but they were so rare that they are statistically insignificant.

Statistically insignificant, perhaps - but usually the good decisions taken by a politician in power outlive them, and have long term benefits - at least, until they are undone by a future potentate, representative of the "bad politician" set.

I didn't mean it that way. I wasn't trying to be facetious either. Consider that I was merely making a statement about a place that you're probably unfamiliar with :)

Thank god we now have the EU bureaucrats making decisions. Because forcing the companies to cheat on, ehm I mean "innovate" on emissions is democratic and western. Somehow the markets don't care about ecology, which is strange, because market knows best.

I really like the sharp lines of old designs. Probably terrible for aerodynamics, but they look great.

> Yes iconic. It has the iconic sound of a lawnmower.

And the car body was made of paper.

A joke making the rounds in Germany back then:

There's this American car collector who has every fancy car imaginable, but then he hears that there is a car in East Germany that is so popular that the order backlog is many years. So he orders one. At the factory, they're perplexed that someone from abroad would order one, and so keen to satisfy their first foreign customer that they ship one out immediately. Later, a friend asks: "So, did you get your East German car yet?" - "No, but they sent me a fully functional cardboard model."

Some love the sound of 3 cylinder two-strokes. The Saab 93 has a cult following. The engine was originally licensed from a German manufacturer. I believe Auto-Union, but someone can correct me?

https://bringatrailer.com/listing/1966-saab-850-gt-monte-car...

My dad used to own one back in the day and has only fond memories of it. At the same time, he says it was the most unreliable car he has ever owned. And the heating never worked. He later replaced it with Wartburg 353.

If you want to see a POV test drive in a Trabant, here's a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzEPWttWVlk

> If you want to see a POV test drive in a Trabant, here's a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzEPWttWVlk

One thing to note is that this is a Trabant 1.1 not a 601. The 1.1 was produced only from 1990 to 1991 and had a four-stroke VW engine (produced under license from VW). So the sound in the video is not the one typical two-stroke engine of the standard 601. The appearance of the car is very similar to the 601, though.

I wonder when we'll see retro-designs of these, i.e. like the modern Mini and the Bumblebee. One model I'm still missing is the 2CV.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citro%C3%ABn_2CV

There was a "newTrabi" concept making the rounds a little while ago, but nothing came of it:

https://www.conceptcarz.com/vehicle/z17483/trabant-nt-concep...

I’ve seen this project ages ago a it’s apparently dead now: https://m.facebook.com/NewWarsaw

Looks like a Mini Cooper.

but then the Mini Cooper truly is a car ..

They are jokingly referred to here as "Trammelant", Dutch for "big trouble" fish in a barrel wordplay. Come to think of it, don't believe I've ever heard anyone use their proper name!

A neighbour used to own one as a hobby car. Those things are loud!

The USAF museum in Dayton Ohio has one on display. When I was there in 2003 they had it placed next to some portions of the Berlin Wall. This example is the 601 S "Delux" which got you two-tone paint and a chrome bumper, in addition to the odometer and back-up light that the "S" special edition got you.

https://imgur.com/a/WnKqNKe

https://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/Visit/Museum-Exhibits/Fact...

Trivia: Trabants were never painted black to avoid being mistaken for a Mercedes.

I had one! <3 https://fb.com/10203599871583608

Any Swedes here should definitely check out the Motornörd episode with the Trabant[1].

You can hear and see it run by an enthusiast who has repaired it so it's worth a watch also if you're curious and can't understand the language.

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXykD-bwets

A local hairdresser owns one and drives it 300m to her studio at the same time every morning. Easy to find a parking space with and oddly charming looks, but the thing sounds like a rolling tin can with a stone in it and smells like death.

I saw a Trabant recently at the local post warehouse location during the lockdown when government nationwide decided to refuse people from using public transport, so anything that at any point in history was roadworthy got back on the road again.

The thing had Soviet plates, was loud as hell, and stalled a few times while I was following them on my way back home. But I guess even after all these years it still manages to deliver on transportation of the owner.

My kid's daily driver: 1961 Ford Galaxie Sunliner

What my kid wants to drive: Trabant

Are these still street legal? I've heard conflicting reports about two-stroke cars in the EU.

There's usually exemption for historic cars (over 30 years old).

Germany: They've got an "H" license plate (historic — older than 30 years), are exempt from emissions laws and often you don't have to pay taxes on them.

Just last week I saw a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wartburg_(marque) on the Autobahn and it made me smile.

Here’s a Benz Victoria from 1894 in Germany with a legal status

https://youtu.be/bQ4vB55z0RE

Apart from the already discussed H license plate Germany also has countless laws dealing with and keeping things legal that were legal in GDR times.

They shouldn't be. Aside the terrible emissions from the 2-stroke engine, they're pretty unsafe. I once had the misfortune to get a ride in W-Berlin in one (early nineties). The windows/interior are so oddly designed, you have a pretty poor view. That might not have been much of an issue in the DDR with the low traffic density then, but it's unfit for the current situation in most European cities or highways.

worth to mention documentary movie "Trabant at the End of the World"

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4205202/

In communist Poland we used to call them "Ford Carton"

Reply on news.ycombinator.com