Trabant
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
- A: Are you happy with your Trabant? B: Yes, except I need to repaint it and some point. It’s blue and as soon as I open the window people start dropping letters for me to mail.
— 4 men were carrying a Trabant. Somebody asks them why? Was it broken? They reply: Nope, nothing wrong with it, we’re just in a hurry.
- A Japanese car manufacturer ordered a Trabant. When it arrived they wrote back: “We got the engine and chassé in a cardboard box, but where is the rest.
- A cop busted a Trabant driver hitting 100km per hour. The cop says: 100levs. The driver counters: another 50 and the car’s yours.
- Trabant stops next to a Lamborghini. Driver rolls down the window and asks - Hey, are you happy with your car? The Lambo driver responds “Yes, why do you ask?”. The Trabi replies: I don’t see many Lambos around, must not be a good car if people aren’t buying it.
The ironic thing is that the Japanese cars produced during the Trabant heydey era (60s-70s) are mostly not around any more due to having rusted.
Maybe we would see more ancient Honda Civics on the road if they used duroplast.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=R5YgRvIhdtk
The track was quite popular so they made another one about Wartburg.
"500 meters of advesive plaster, please."
The pharmacist looks at him, shocked. The next person in line pats him on his back and says:
"Sir, 100 meters is enough. I also have a Trabant."
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzV2uljPvyAeEgAEgwYNf...
[2] - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzV2uljPvyAe1K8ArgPHG...
Cars have massively improved in reliability these days to the point where you've all forgotten all the stuff we had to go through as owners of carburator driven cars. Not staring in the winter, empty batteries, having to heat up diesel, dealing with constant light bulb breakages...
> of course they required maintenance but were so basic that anyone could do it
The problem with most products made under planned economy is that they often didn't even work out of the factory, and required part replacement or hacking some solution right off the bat. And the maintenance wasn't really trivial most of the time. Yes, modern cars have planned obsolescence but they are far more reliable and don't need to be serviced that often.
This happens under capitalism as well. Judging by the amount of junk in your average building store's tool department... some of it looks just like the real thing, in some cases they aren't even trying. I recently bought an air relief key for my radiators, they only sold them in packs of three. All three of them were of such crappy casting material that they broke on the first tap I tried to open with them. Fortunately I found one made in the 70's or so from stainless steel and that worked like a charm. But you couldn't buy that quality today in a normal store, you'd have to go to some specialty place that sells tools for professionals, get yourself a registered account with them and then you can order.
Planned economy products were a mixed bag, that's for sure, but capitalism can produce junk just as easily. What matters are the incentives and to what degree the buyers have access to alternatives.
Visit Cuba to see the "survivorship bias" theory proven BS. Or many places in Asia and Africa and Latin America, for that matter. Older cars, including cheap ones like the 2CV, VW Beetle, Fiat Mini, Yugo, and such, were very serviceable and durable, with very easy means of repair. I know people who in 2023, still have the Beetle, 2CV, and Mini in working condition (and rather pristine), their family having it since the 70s. And I had a friend who was using a Yugo for over 20 years, from student to 40ish (he changed it when he got a kid).
If a modern car, engine or one of the dozens of cpus die, you're SOL without the manufacturer support, original parts, and official service. Even worse for an electric.
With those you could go around the world (and many in the 60s and 70s did, like going on "hippie" style adventures), and fix them locally, sometimes even with the most basic tools.
>those that survived were usually maintained out of necessity
And that's bad (or invalidates their durability) because?
I actually lived in a planned economy country and I know the bullshit you had to put up with. If you compare apples to apples, i.e. cars made in Eastern Bloc/USSR and the rest of the world of the same era, the typical experience of a car owner in communist countries was exactly like in Cuba - you were expected to constantly fix the half-assed crap you bought because it's literally falling apart. The fall of the wall and the Union led to the instant increase in the quality even during the turmoil of the economic transition. That was long before the prevalence of smart everything, planned obsolescence, "enshittification" etc.
My father at the time had Skoda and before that a Siren. Each year when he tried to transport grandparents 20km for Xmas eve, when the temperature dropped it was half a day of tinkering with no guarantee of working.
Meanwhile over last decade I pulled multiple 3k km+ vacation trips over the Europe in 13-15 years old cars. Worst thing that happened was single random "check engine" light that went away later.
Communism was shit. I hope I won't ever see it again.
Theres a German entertainer that made TV skit where he tracked down some of these people (probably some time in the late 90s or early 2000s and "delivered" their new Trabant on (hidden) camera. Quite fun.
The vacuum cleaners, refridgerators - are inefficient but built like tanks. Also often primitive enough to be repaired.
This isn't really true. My dad's Yugo was always breaking down. The only redeeming thing was that the car was easily serviceable and the parts were cheap and widely available.
So after 10 years or so you end up with a Yugo of Theseus.
e.g platform PL45 (B5) is shared across Audi A4/S4, VW Passat, and Skoda Superb.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_Group_B_platform
SEAT is also in the mix.
Seeing by them on the road it's quite obvious that most of these VW group cars within a segment are essentially the same with slightly different body panels, front grill, and head/taillights.
They're not upset, it's part of the whole strategy: it's basically an image/brand thing + aiming at specific domestic and/or wallet-size market, like, typically Audi usually starts off introducing the new platforms along with with premium "finish" (bigger engines, leather interiors, suspension tuning, fancy lights or features, etc...), then as the production tool gets amortised the platform trickles down to other brands with "lesser" "finish". The "premium" brand gets some amount of protection by being the first to have new shiny stuff for a little while.
It's a bit like Toyota GT86 vs Subaru BR-Z, only a notch further.
If that happens to be a locust, there is a risk of rollover.
Fiat 126p or 125p was a staple of communism in Poland.
E.g. Zastava was building them (the Yugo, "crappiest" car in the world was a licensed Fiat platform, same with 101 and 750). Polski Fiat was another example of Fiats common licensing of their platforms to Eastern Europe.
They weren't very good, but they were available.
Why not finding one would that make it more desirable? If anything, it would have doubled its value!
did you know Trabant had a luxury package where it came with dual exhaust? the feature was hailed as a revolutionary wheelbarrow with heated handles.
How many people does it take to build a Trabant?
Two: One folds, one glues.
- hey who are you? - who? Me? I am a car! - yea, sure. If you are a car, I am a pizza!
Because when you drive one, a comrade pushes while you go "Brrrrrrrr" <raspberry like car noises>
German engineers from the Trabant factory toured an auto assembly line in Japan. At the end of the line they witnessed a Japanese worker put a live cat inside the car and shut the doors. Puzzled, the German engineers asked their tour guide why. The guide replied, "When we come back the next morning, if the cat is dead we know the car was built airtight and thus has passed inspection." The German engineers nod and take notes. When they get back to Germany they put a cat in a Trabant and roll up the windows. When they get back the next morning the cat is gone.
(The joke is that Trabants are built with engineering tolerance so poor that an animal as large as a cat could slip through the cracks.)
What’s the best device for measuring the Trabant‘s acceleration? A calendar.
A few months later he's driving in his - now repaired - Mercedes on the autobahn, and wouldn't you know it, there is the Trabant stuck by the side of the road with smoke coming out. The Mercedes owner (who has had his car upgraded with all manner of luxury) jumps out, grabs his fire extinguisher and sprints to the Trabant intent on saving the owner. But just as he's about to let loose with the spray a voice comes out of the Trabant: "Just a second, I'll be done with my sauna shortly".
When riding in a Trabant, the passengers carry most of the kinetic energy. To reduce damage to the Trabant in a collision, secure it to as many passengers as possible via seat belts.¹
--
1. Offered as an add-on option, featured in the deluxe package.
Another Bulgarian jokes about Trabant:
- It is that it's the longest car in the world... if you take the smoke trail behind it.
- A truck was heavily and couldn't climb a hill. A Trabant stops and suggests to pull it over the hill. The Trabant keeps pulling making a huge cloud of smoke. At the top of the hill, the truck driver jokes: "See how much smoke you made!" And the Trabant driver responds: "Sorry, I forgot to release the hand brake."
But driving them is a fun thing to do if you have the chance. I did that a few times with visitors and very much enjoyed that.
On the dashboard, there was a sticker to remind us not to go beyond 50km/h. I think on the final stretch we hit 100. The whole car was shaking, it felt as if the tyres were about to come off. Great fun.
This car is basically a kid’s drawing meeting origami
https://danmurdoch.blogspot.com/ https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1974104/
The whole neighborhood would wake up when you would turn on this thing and we actually would go on vacations in it. We were reaching 100km/h and the whole thing was vibrating so bad it felt like it was gonna come apart.
I remember how wholesome it was for 2 trabant drivers to wave to one another as they passed each other on the road. And there was always a sense of camaraderie and solidarity between them. We a few times stopped in the middle of nowhere next to people whose trabant car broke down. Either ran out of gas or some engine problem and my dad would fix it for them or give them enough gas to get them to the next station.
Good times.
My mother got into an accident with a Ford that totaled the Lada (and the Ford).
They bought the same model again, but at this point Soviet manufacturing had deteriorated and that car was nothing but trouble.
I do remember annual 2000km trips to the french coast though...
Cool car imho, but dangerous for its passengers.
What do you call a Lada with a sunroof? A [skip](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skip_(container))
What do you call a Lada at the top of a hill? A miracle
So many of these went around the school playground as a kid. Even the bad ones got a laugh. All could have had Skoda substituted for Lada depending on the day.
Trabant was joked about, though.
https://www.berlin.de/en/museums/3977291-3104050-spy-museum-...