A (not so) Serious Look at East Germany's Most Popular Car
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- Опубліковано 12 вер 2024
- In my very first video essay (complete with subpar microphone quality and horrendous attempts at humor) I explore the history of East Germany's most popular vehicle: The VEB Saschenring Trabant. While some (perhaps unfairly) consider it to be the worst car in the world, it provided affordable, reliable, simple transportation for millions and served as escape vehicles for families leaving East Germany near the end of the Cold War. With all of this in mind, the Trabant certainly has a very unique legacy.
Thanks for watching!
P.S. I would recommend reading my pinned comment, as I do have some regrets about how I characterized certain things in this video. Thanks!
Music (From UA-cam Audio Library)
Body of Water - Tracktribe
Cafe Regrette - Asher Fulero
Familiar Things - The Whole Other
Teasing the King - Nathan Moore
The Goon's Loose - Nathan Moore
The Loner - DJ Williams
Wish You'd Never Left - Tracktribe
Sources:
pastebin.com/7...
After a bit of reflection, I've realized that there are quite a few things I could have done better in this video. Firstly, I should have contextualized the Eastern Bloc without using all of the Western propaganda talking points (such as referring to the "Freedom" of the West). As a commenter noted, East Germans could leave the country, but couldn't freely travel into the Western world.
I should have also mentioned, as several other commenters have pointed out, that the Trabant had a TRANSVERSE engine in addition to being front wheel drive, which was very innovative at the time and likely influenced many Western designs such as the Saab 92 and the original Mini.
Additionally, a lot of my attempts at humor in this video completely missed the point of what the Trabant was supposed to be. It was not supposed to be luxurious, refined, complicated, fast, or anything of the sort. It was simply designed to be affordable, reliable, simple transportation for millions. At its core, a car is an appliance intended to get people from one place to another, and the Trabant did just as good of (if not better in some cases) a job of mobilizing a country than a wide variety of Western "people's cars." In fact, the Volkswagen Beetle and Citroën 2CV were both produced for longer periods of time than the Trabi, and their simplicity was a major reason why people kept buying them. I'm not saying the Trabi was better than those two cars, just that it wasn't as far off as some may think.
TLDR: I've realized that this video makes the Trabant look worse than it actually is (it actually did a great job of getting East Germany moving), and that you can't always trust the Western narrative on the Eastern Block.
Thank you for your feedback on this video. I honestly didn't expect the UA-cam algorithm to suddenly decide to promote this video weeks after I uploaded it, so thank you all for holding me accountable for what I said in this video.
Yes, when I was eating I thought what spoiled it a bit was you shoveling the propaganda and the over the top, arrogant snark that comes off as snide. Real people made the factory run and society run. And you overplay the brain-drain angle, see my other comment about Jenaotik, the high tech half of Zeiss that remained so and continues to this day. A lot of Germans left via Berlin, but from other cities not too much, Anyway, if you learn from your mistake and lose the mocking toe and shining on people that lived with fear advantages than you. DPAD.
You are absolutely correct. You may not trust any propaganda regardless of where it originates. I do trust the word of mouth from the people they endured east Germany's stranglehold around the throat of it's citizens. According to them. East Germany was not a pleasant place to be.
Yes, it was an enoying video. I stopped watching at the comment BIG BLOCK because enough is enough. Constantly jokes about this car... You shouldnt.
If an east German person told you that they could leave East Germany after 1961then that was a lie.
There was no leaving the East on your own terms. There was only escape and lots of escapees were shot in the process. The border between east and west as well as the wall around West Berlin was not to keep west Germans out but rather keep east Germans in.
Your video is fine. I don't think one can deny that there was significantly more freedom in the west than in the east. Also the Trabant was a modern and innovative car in the 60s, but by the 80s it was just a joke. Compare it to a Polo or a Corsa for example.
I´m from eastern Germany and I see these vihicles still from time to time. Now because of nostalgia these cars are exponentially more expensive then they where in their hayday in the GDR. Good video 🙂👍
I have a left hand drive one here in the UK. Mine has 90,000Km on the clock, and was imported from Bulgaria in 2020. I paid nearly €2,000 for mine!
@@neilfoster814Why ? 🤯
@@Indigenous51 LOL. For the adventure???
@@Indigenous51 Because he liked its quirks and features.
Same reason I have a copy of Kim Jong Il's autobiography in English, that I got at the Shanghai Expo. I have no fondness for NK and its leaders; it's just a fun, weird thing to have.
@@neilfoster814 However, the Zaporozhets is still more impressive. Even 968m, not speaking of 965 Gorbaty
A few clarifications are in order. While both the Trabant and Wartburg required oil to be mixed-in with their fuel, no one in East Germany actually needed to break out measuring cups to add the correct amount of oil to the gas tank. The pumps at East German gas stations had selectors to allow you to choose what percentage of oil was added to the gasoline as you filled up. A useful feature because, except in the immediate postwar period, all cars, motorcycles, and light commercial vehicles made in East Germany used two-stroke engines. East Germans *were* allowed to leave their borders. They could not easily travel to the West, but they could freely travel within other communist states, Hungary being a popular destination. While it's easy to joke about the Trabant's lawnmower engine, the reality is that it was actually a development of prewar DKW motorcycle engines. Finally, all those "Trabant" jokes aren't really Trabant jokes. Over the years I have heard them being variously used to mock VW Beetles, Ladas, Yugos, even Ford Tempos.
When I started riding mopeds, most garages had an oil dispenser with 1:25, 1:50 etc, so you gave 2 shots into your tank (1 per half gallon), then put your gallon of petrol in and gave your bike a good shake to mix it up. 😂😂
Thank you for the clarification! The part about the oil at East German gas stations makes a lot of sense, as I don't think anyone would ever want to manually add oil to their fuel. Also, I certainly should have mentioned that East Germans could travel outside the country; that one is definitely on me. And yes, in hindsight I definitely overused the "lawnmower engine" joke, as two-strokes are no longer very common in cars.
Get the mix at the pump in Eastern Germany
Early 90s
The West German Army had thousands of two stroke jeeps,TheMunga Three Cylinder Four Seater.
There was a tailgate version also,six and eight seater. They were awsome off road,the two stroke engine could be a handfull if it was not tuned properly and you were not used to two strokes.(Had one at one point)
I have seen Brit Military using them too. There is even a photograph of the Royals in one on a visit to West Germany.
I love the assembly line workers 'tweaking' the fit and finish..LOL! I have a Russian friend who's dad had a 65 601. It's only option was a dealer installed oil burning under seat heater, much like VW Beetles had. We're talking live flames inside your car, and under your butt...Anyhow, during the cold Russian winters, he had to take the 6V battery out every night and bring it inside the house so it wouldn't freeze. Most of the time, the car required push starting anyways. The car leaked water so badly that his dad drilled holes in the floor in the low spots to let the water drain out. By the 90s, the rear spring anchors rotted through, and that was the end of it.
In The US Jeep you sat on the fuel tank,same on The Brit Landrover. Only 4x4s I ever owned where you did'nt was The Austin Champ and West German Munga. How about the wartime Kubel ? The fuel tank was almost in your lap.
Sexy !
This car was called ‚Erich Honecher’s revenge’. Great video! A lot of good work. Now a challenge for you - Fiat 126p from Poland 😊
Polsky125 was sold in other countries .it's better than the ladas.
Merkel is Honnies revenge😁
the highlight are the two factory workers!
the hairstyle of the guy fixing the hood is award winning (ok, very popular in those days).
Less from a hair style point of view (although also noteworthy) the door assemblyman's skill level is fantastic. My favorite move is when he puts the wooden pin in the door and bends the whole door so that it fits. Sounds like funny, but what can you do when you work with components that have tolerances completely out of spec.
thank's also for the off road clips, not bad at all. It reminds you that lightweight always wins.
Yeah.....I thought Borat installing the door hilarious...
Hairstyle of that guy had a name: Vokuhila (Vorne kurz, Hinten lang, short up front, long in the rear)
@@blitzroehre1807 Sag mal Blitzroehre, ist das Ossi Jargon? Das war klar auch meine Zeit, aber Dein Vohukila habe ich leider nie gehoert. Manche Maedels hatten (haben) das auch, grausam.
It's a common misconception that the Trabants used a DKW engine. DKW never made an air-cooled car. The engine isn't even the old pre-war DKW with the water jacket removed and some cooling fins stuck on. When the Trabant was being conceived the East Germans looked to West Germany for inspiration and saw the Lloyd microcars, which were at that time very popular with West Germans. The Lloyd had been designed by ex-DKW men, which seems to be the root of the problem (there is also the myth that the first production SAABs used DKW engines, but again, these engines were designed by ex-DKW employees and had no actual corporate relation to DKW). Lloyds differed from the DKW of the time in a few significant ways, aside from being air-cooled, they also had the engine sat ahead of the front axle (like modern front wheel drive cars) whereas DKW were still producing cars with the engine behind the axle, and the transmission out front, and indeed the early IFA cars also used the old-fashioned layout. Lloyd also inspired the first Suzuki car, the Suzulight, which copied Lloyd's air-cooled 2 stroke, front wheel drive power plant, but then mirrored it for right hand drive! If you look at the Suzulights, Trabants, and Lloyds side by side, the family resemblance is pretty obvious, and if you look under the hood, all three are practically identical!
Hi from Russia. Thank You for this detailed review
17:50 is a very striking image because you can see how the East lagged behind the West just by the fact that that old Audi 80 going eastbound was either brand new or up to 5 years old at the date of footage, and some of those Trabbies definitely were the same age as it. Imagine buying a 1960s car brand new in 1986...
Oh wait. There's a Citroen Dyane next to the Audi lmao
"Oh wait. There's a Citroen Dyane next to the Audi"
Well noted!!
Most anti-Eastern Block propagandists love to forget to mention, not just was the anachronic Trabant 2-stroke engine a product of the West (and DKWs using this very technology were produced throughout the 1960s, as were the highly praised SAABs), as were the 2CV (and derivatives) and the Beetle (and derivatives) still being mass produced in the "free" (cough! cough!) capitalist world well into the 1990s. They go to the extreme of "forgetting to mention" that the Trabant was the first successful TRANSVERSE ENGINE FWD car mass produced (it was the second ever mass made; the first was the SAAB 92, soon discontinued in favor of a longitudinal engine SAAB 93) and crediting the feat of being the first to the equally laughable and adorable Austin Seven/Morris Mini that came years later.
Just as the Land Rover was admittedly created as the British feasible clone of the American GP vehicle in the wake of WW2, I'd dare to say the Mini was the feasible clone of the Trabant in the dawn of the cold war.
In short: the Trabant should be the one credited with SETTING THE STANDARD for the revolution in passenger car layout that came in the decades after it!
Only now, well into the 21st Century, it's being turned obsolete by a completely new tech altogether: the BEV skateboard layout - all with transverse e-motors, of course.
@@Carbonate67 there are definite advancements in the Trabbie, for once the two-stroke engine has a lot of potential yet sits unloved due to pollution issues, noise/high rpm and the whole fuel/oil mixture thing (although i remember being a kid and petrol stations would have a small, often portable manual pump serving what they called "mixture" and you'd see old bikes, and farm dudes with chainsaws and whatnot filling up on it. )
I think the late trabbies had a "advanced" formula 1 style (lmao) LED rev counter (looked stolen straight from a hifi deck lmao) and let's not forget that Duroplast (the body material) is the perfect anti-planned obsolescence material, even if not safe.
I think the Trabbie could be developed with Western liberties and perhaps bring back some of those old concepts. Hell, the P601 was not that different from... the Renault Super5. And that's a free world car. A 1991 launch of that would look just a tad outdated, and you know what else looked a tad outdated in 1991? The Fiat Panda, and that sold a lot.
I think there was potential for Trabant to be at least a small player in the market and maybe last a couple more years or maybe be up there with the schönennamen like VW or Opel.
*But i guess it was convenient that such an image of a less happy time had to be destroyed*
@brunopadrino1498 There are some very good points in this comment. In hindsight I wish that I did a better job of contextualizing how advanced the Trabant was for the time and how many Western cars were almost certainly influenced by its design. I also should have mentioned comparatively ancient Western cars like the Beetle and 2CV which were far more outdated in many ways than the Trabi. Thank you for holding me accountable for this.
@@Carbonate67 Don't get me wrong, yours is one of the very few videos on UA-cam that did a good job! But I guess you can see I'm somewhat of a Trabi-enthusiast - it came to me as a surprise when I visited Germany less than 10 year ago; all I had heard before was the typical bashing.
The West was incredibly polluted in the turn of the 70s to the 80s, but Western anti-pollution actions in the 80s made the East look so bad when the iron curtain fell in the turn to the 90s - and the Trabi's smoking tailpipe became sort of an icon of the "lack of environmental concern of the communists!"; adding to that, Western European automakers had reached maturity of their city car models by 1990, with VW making the outstanding Golf 2, Fiat making the Uno and the Tipo, and PSA making the beloved 205 and the Citroën AX. Yet, PSA was still making the 2CV in France and Fiat kept making the 126 in Poland all the way through the year 2000, while VW was making air-cooled, carbureted, non-catalyst Beetles and "Kombis" (T1/T2 Transporter) in Mexico and Brazil.
So I'm really glad I'm not the only one lately finding out how good an automotive design the Trabi was.
Thanks for making this video and taking your time in the comments! Cheers
@@miaugato93 Too bad they were prohibited from using 4-stroke engines by the Soviets. Imagine the 601 with a 30-40hp VW beetle engine of the same era. That would have been a quite nice car I think.
My father was in the US Army, and stationed in Germany from 1989-1992. In August 1989, it was rather surprising to start seeing Trabants and Wartburgs on the West German autobahns, driven by East Germans escaping via Hungary. Some "Osties" moved into our neighborhood, with their Trabant. They were very excited to replace that with a late70s Opel.
This gotta be the best video off your channel, crazy quality for 55 subs
Definitely gonna be getting more subs soon!
As someone who drive's a p50 to work every day some interesting facts
the gearbox on a p50 has an engageable freewheel on all gears it also is unsynchronized and has a smaller ratio (top speed is about 90km/h).
The later models p60 and 601 had the more well known 4 speed with the fixed freewheel that was synchronized and had taller gears (top speed 110km/h).
The model was also popular in de benelux my uncle got married in his he bought brand new in belgium.
The gdr vans (barkas b1000) where very popular here until the gdr collapse.
There was even a company here that made them in to campers! how cool is that!
The quality and feature also lessened with time, funnily enough the p50/60 was more luxurious than the later 601.
Originale no recycled cotton was used. it was just bad quality cotton they cheaply bought from the ussr.
The materials used where also better. In the body pannels of later trabi's you can see pieces of recycled cotton like jeans and tshirts.
The bolt heads en steel got thinner, less trim and colors in the interieur and no headliner.
I love all trabi's but the p50/60 are truly beautifull cars.
Still today they are quite usable and can keep up with (european) traffic. Just avoid highways.
You get a lot of waves, smiles and thumbs up when driving. just be prepared the tell people the same things every time you stop for gas!
Back in the day even in western europe you could buy premixed 2 stroke gas at the pumps.
Today you do have to mix it yourself but its no big deal just pour in the oil first and then the fuel and it mixes itself that way.
You do get people who get impatient and annoyed by the fact you have to stop at the pump at the front of the car and block more of the gasstation.
I rarely use my dipstick to check fuel only at the pump to know how much oil i have to put in the tank first.
You have a fuel valve that you operate from the inside which give a "reserve" option switch to this when the car start to stall and you have about 6l of fuel left.
i get about 250-280km on a 20l tank some people get better gas mileage i like to run it a little fatter.
The p70 it had a steel/wood construction with many different body styles but no trunk that was accessible from the outside, you had to fold the rear seat down to access it from the inside.
At that time i believe nobody called it a trabant that name was only used from the p50 forward, the p50 was only called the p50 after the release of the p60 on the back it in fact says only trabant no nummeral is added.
The name trabant was chosen by a competition and a young boy came up with the name although i am not sure about this.
These vehicles go way to fast than what is actually safe!
Good video, just one but important mistake. The Berlin Wall wasn't surrounding East Berlin but it was around west Berlin. The road to west Germany wasn't into west berlin in1989 but rather across the inner German border and its check points like the one in Helmstedt. West Berlin was a west German island located in the middle of east Germany. Keep up the good work.
This was a much more balanced view on the context the Trabant existed in than other videos i've seen on YT. Yea some points could have been presented a bit more fairly, but over all it's pretty refreshing and well put together.
I grew up in post-reunified east germany, i own a Trabant. Good video.
I like how they made "small adjustments" on the doors with a piece of wood and a hammer... Then slamming the doors so hard, that basically they "beat themselfs into shape". Of course this method is unimaginable today, but it worked just fine back then...
Because of safety concerns the Trabant never got trough homologation in Belgium, as a result they weren't allowed on public roads. This wasn't a problem until the fall of the wall when the car suddenly became a collectors item. As a typical Belgian compromise the cars were allowed on the road with "oldtimer" plates, despite many Trabants not being the required 25 years old.
The Wartburg on the other hand did not have this problem and was quite popular as a cheap car.
I own a 1988 Trabant P601 Kombi (estate), it's one of the very few in the UK.
The original Trabant factory in Zwickau was demolished years ago (only the Agust Horch museum remains), the VW factory was built in 1991 in Mosul which is 3km north of Zwickau and it makes the VW ID3 and spare parts for the Golf.
The Trabi engines were built at the old Auto Union works in Chemnitz and delivered by truck to the Sachsenring Automobilewerk in Zwickau to be added to the Trabant body shells.
To buy a half decent Trabi today will cost you easily £5,000/5,500€, with a Kubel costing much more.
Thanks for pointing that out about the factory! Looks like I made a bit of a mistake there...
@@Carbonate67 still a great video though, I enjoyed it!
I own hundreds of Trabants, Wartburgs, IFA, Barkas and other GDR vehicles ... as miniatures. Most of these produced in the GDR when it still existed. Some are still produced by the Modelltec company who bought the surviving moulds.
Hi !
My first! car was a Trabbi
(as we called them here in Iceland 🇮🇸)...
It was a 1978 model (I think) !! and it was the "station" model.
I believe it was called the Trabant 601 "Universal".
-And the one with a boot was called the;
Trabant 601 "Limousine" 😅
-Cheers from Iceland 🇮🇸
Karl Trausti 🌿
Sorry, but I'm pretty sure Mosul is in Iraq 😉
In Poland we used to call them „Honecker Vengeance”, due to inferior design and poor quality.
My Polish friends call my Trabant "soapdish" 😂
That's funny because the 601 dates from the 1960s when Walter Ulbricht was still in charge.
@@neilfoster814I think you mean “soapbox”, we called it that because it seemed to be made from plastic. Just like a travel “soapbox”.
@@martindworak Polish Humour,Love it !
At first, on hearing your sarcastic remarks, my first thought was , "So when was the last time YOU designed an automobile?" It certainly isn't easy. But in all, you have done an excellent job researching. And so much of your sarcasm is truly enjoyable. We can all laugh about our humanity. I would encourage you to continue your excellent research and videos.
Well researched and engagingly presented; you tell the story of the Trabant as a car, but also the social context in which it was produced and how that car really changed people's lives.
Nice one!
I also don't think you mentioned the Trabi had body panels made of "duroplast", a recycled composite waste material from other industries. While a littel crude, I think it was quite innovative and would definately be appreciated more today.
You could almost call it a "green vehicle", if it wasn't for the two stroke engine belching smoke part.
Yea he did at 3:10
@@campionpesate4647 thanks, I missed it.👍
it was mentioned
Music was very loud at times. Cool video
Thanks for the feedback! I'll lower the volume next time.
I remember after the fall of the wall that West Germany really struggled with Letting these death traps on the autobahn. Lights that were barely there and low top speed made them a hazard to navigation.
Fun fact: a few years ago there was talk about resourrecting the brand name and some of the design features in a new, fully electric car. The even presented a prototype but sadly this went nowhere.
And if you're ever in Leipzig or Berlin, make sure to do a Trabant city tour. A tour guide in a Trabi will lead you through the city while you follow, driving yourself in a second Trabant, listening to what they have to say about the city via radio.
As for the place that car holds in many people's hearts, check out the 1990 movie "Go Trabi go"!
Minor quibble: the Berlin Wall surrounded West Berlin, not East Berlin. That was the great irony of the thing. The free people were ones enclosed.
I own a '88 Trabi Limousine S deluxe myself and it gets you everywhere without any problems. I even drove from southern Germany to Scotland last year with it. It's a quirky little car and many people will smile, cheer or give a thumbs up when you drive past them. With a bluetooth box you even have a good sound system
Some people criticize your jokes but honestly I think you still handled the topic of the Trabant more fairly and more respectfully than many better-known youtubers, including a guy who starts his videos with "This is a [ ]..."
One little mistake I've noticed about the car itself- the P70 was never sold as a Trabant. It was either sold as a Sachsenring P70 or as an AWZ P70 (AWZ meaning Zwickau Car Factory in German). Other people have already pointed out some more general historical inaccuracies so I won't focus on them
Also, as a side note to 14:30, I would say that Wartburg was much more than "loosely" based on a pre-war platform as it was actually just a re-bodied DKW F9 with almost no changes to the chassis (aside from coil springs being added in 1965). Trabant's platform actually seems modern compared to Wartburg, which was still body on frame when its production ended in 1991 (!) and had a longitudinally mounted engine (except for the final 4-stroke version which had it mounted transversely)
There is a gathering in Washington DC of Trabants at the International Spy Museum every November. As a Trabant owner here in the USA, I am deeply in love with these little cars.
I recommend a trip to Zwickau, home of the Trabi. It still has a Trabantstrasse. Best of all, it has a great car museum celebrating the history of the four companies who formed Auto Union.
I enjoyed this video. Well researched and presented. Top job.
Nicely produced video and nicely narrated! Good luck with your channel!
Love the quality control
Well made video! Enjoyed it a lot as someone born in the eastern block.
Sub-par mic or not, this was good- and it didn't sound as bad as you think. Good job. Hope to see more like this from your channel. I really enjoyed this.
Your best comment is simply this: it’s a representation of freedom. Or was. However limited that was within the confines of the Eastern Block, it gave citizens the chance to explore when they wanted to.
We now face a time where the car and drivers generally are roundly vilified as selfish, environment destroying relics. Yet we forget that the car represents individual freedoms, freedoms being lost through 15 minute cities, road pricing, LTN’s and other spurious environmental accusations which are rarely backed up.
What a wonderful machine the Trabi was. A symbol of freedom, as was the Mini or Fiat 500.
Legend has it the factory quality tester is still opening and closing that door and tapping on it with a mallet.
I gotta be honest, that two door wagon looks sick as hell.
I lived in West Berlin from 88-91. I once had the opportunity to drive a Trabi. It was ‘an experience’. Everything is weird, starting with the fact that the rough to shift transmission had no synchromesh for most gears, making coasting difficult. They were awful, but people still like the AMC Pacer here too. No accounting for taste, I’d guess. That said, as bad as they were they offered their owner’s something priceless - autonomy - at least within the Warsaw Pact.
This year, VEB Sachsenring Automobilwerke Zwickau will introduce the Trabant 12-volt electrical system. And you'll see why 1984 won't be like "1984."
I was stuck behind a Trabant in a traffic jam near Frankfort in the 1990's. The acrid smoke was choking us
I'm with you on the look of the Trabant P50 Universal (station wagon or estate) - even though it was meant to be utilitarian, it somehow ended up being incredibly cute. The long-running 601 somehow lost this optimistic, late '50s feel even though it had a pleasant-looking, contemporary style at launch in 1964. (Mind you, here in the UK, we kept the original Mini in production from 1959 until 2000, so who are we to laugh?!)
there was a relatively recent attempt to launch a Trabant EV which never went into production, which is a shame, it looked like a proper modernized version of a Trabant but it kept its design lineage too, it looked pretty cool
Did you hear about the Trabant accident with 52 injured? The two drivers bumped their heads, and 50 people started a dust-up over the spare parts.
East Berlin's poor air quality? I can personally vouch for that! When I was 17 years, I went for a week to West Berlin , for an international youth conference - with my school. The Berlin Wall was still up, but things had eased up a bit - so people could cross as tourists to the East, and we went the NATIONAL GERMAN THEATRE . BUT, although mercifully, I have now grown out of the HAY FEVER I suffered from at the time, the 2 - stroke engines' pollution made my hayfever much worse on the day we were in EAST Berlin!
omg those 70s prototypes are ADORABLE I love the honeycomb grille
I have looked at the Trabants styled grill many times.
In my opinion it looks aggresive but also cute,which may have attracted the leadership.
Trabants are actually nifty little things, and some crazy madlad swapped in the drivetrain from a Tatra light duty truck and a Turbocharged Wartburg Engine.
126HP OF FURY
Also the Trabant 800RS, competed in Group A5 specifically, and that class had a grand total of 4 cars, the Skoda 130LR which was essentially just the Group B version with the aerodynamic devices removed, the Wartburg 353, which was uhh, a brick, and the Skoda Favorit, the class was abolished in 1994 and replaced by the Formula 2 Kit Cars 1300cc class.
The Trabant actually did fairly well in the class, it's handling and general reliability made it a pretty well done weapon, and the fact that it had 65 HORSEPOWER means it was on par with the Wartburg and Skoda in Power-to-Weight.
I feel sorry for the engineers they designed some really nice looking cars, it must have been so frustrating for them having the government nope everything.
Honestly, those engneers had it good. There sovjet counterparts working for the military had a huge tendancy to end up in Gulags
@@yoschiannik8438 fair point
What is "Trabant" in French? : "Carton de blamage" What do you call a Trabant with a pair of running shoes on the back seat? : A "TRABANT SPORT" What does the model designation "601" on the back of a Trabant mean? : 600 Trabants got ordered, 1 got delivered. ..etc..
I love how the wagon looks, too
Trabants don’t get enough respect. They helped a defeated nation crawl out of the rubble, then weather the slow collapse of the Soviet Union. Using industrial waste from the USSR, they did a lot when not much was available. No radiator, no water pump, no fuel pump, no oil changes...they were the perfect tool for the time.
I wish I could get one here in Kentucky, love the Kombi…spent a bunch of years living in Germany. Never had one, drive BMW and Lincoln😊
I believe you can still take a "Trabi Tour" in Berlin, but it's not cheap.
I saw it in 2005, but I don't know if it is still going. Most amazing, the company (about a mile west of Alexanderplatz) had a stretched convertible Trabi!! I don't know how much of the original car made it into the stretched version.
Nice video and an interesting topic for your first video, espacially with all the hard to pronounce German words but I think you did it quite well. Subbed. :)
Edit: As someone, born in West Germany, years after the unification, it was really interesting going to University in Eastern Germany. The Trabant really represents something for quite a few people here, yet not only good things, but also bad things, like the lack of commodities and general wealth in the GDR, but it also represtens a time long gone as they find themselves in a world that is so essantially diffrent from what they have learned in school and university so I think it is understandable why so many people still cling to old products from the GDR.
An impressive little car. A now classic that can fetch good money at auction
With body panels made of cotton, you didn't have to worry about rust... but you DID have to worry about moths... 😁
HA no, you absolutely had to worry about rust. Duroplast body panels obscured most of the body structure so by the point rust became visible (that would happen when it reached window height) the lower structure was often beyond saving, esepcially a delicate front subframe attachment point. When that joint was rusty cars would often just break in half with the engine and front suspension becoming a separate entity. It is possible to reattach the subframe but it's a difficult and expensive repair that usually exceeded the value of a Trabant so most of them were just scrapped
A German here, sorry "Trabant" is not the German word for satellite. The word is much older than any satellite. It means travelling companion, ordinarily by foot. These plastic bombers were a pain in the *ss as they had 2 cycle engines and stunk up the whole neighborhood. I passed them on my trips from Berlin to Hannover a million times. The top speed they realisticly made was no more than 70-75 kph with three guys (fully loaded) in it going to work...that's 45 mph. The windows would be fogged up all around as they had a totally insufficient heater (don't want to say heating system)...just like the VW bug. Waitinglists on one of those creepy creations would often exceed 10 years with the 11,000 East Marks to be paid upfront.
Good one. Keep them coming!
I would love to get my hands on one of these someday. They deeply fascinate me as many "bad cars" do.
Please do more essays, you're good
how the hell do u only have like 400 subs?!?! clicked on the video thinking you had way more even as i was watching it
6:00 The free wheel of the 4th gear is manly to prevent engine to get not enough lubrication. You know, 2 stroke engines are lubricated via the with oil mixed petrol. And also the have a very low breaking effect if you release the throttle. If now you let the engine run on high RPM without free wheel drive there is not enough oil going to the engine to lubricate the pistons.
But off course, with a a view to the missing break effect of the engine to high RPM of is possible hill down.
This car lacks normally essential motor parts, no fuel pump, just place the tank above the motor where, in a crash, it is perfectly safe.
Communism makes cars out of recycled materials: Lol how poor and backwards 😂
But if Tesla uses recycled materials: What a cool eco friendly idea 💚
That was pretty cool video for your first none video game one please do more I like it
The car I've seen once in Berlin 7 years ago, and eventually seen one in Spy x Family! I have no idea the miniature Trabby I got was in the same show the uber-cuuute Anya Forger is in!!
Technically the wall wasn’t around east Berlin, it was built by the East Germans around West Berlin, a western exclave within east Germany.
At about 8:40 you say that the Berlin Wall surrounded East-Berlin while in reality it was build around West-Berlin! Although it was not a wall per se at all locations, between East- en West- Berlin it was an actual wall, at all other locations it was lots of barbedwire and watch towers with only one entry from East-Germany: Checkpoint Bravo and one towards East-Berlin: Checkpint Charly. Checkpoint Alpha was at te border between West- and East-Germany.
Thanks for the clarification!
Very interesting I lived in West Berlin during that time frame and made many trips to East Berlin
Great Video. Continue with this new direction. Well done!
Very good video essay, especially for your first, subbed and waiting for more!
2 weeks after tge Wall 'came down' I saw my first Trabi in UK...at John O,'Groats. A young couple camping and very happy.
this is very good, and good job on your first video essay. i have subscribed and look forward to learn further this made my day.
Nice documentary!
Hi from Russia. Thanks for a video. Even if some people will find some mistakes in it, it's of great value.
Actually, I'm fond of auto history, but had never have any interest for Trabant. Except the idea of its car bodies, which used not metal, but old rubbish and rubber. So, usually I was looking for production videos of Trabant to see the production process (in differrnt parts of the city as I remember) and how the body parts were formed by presses. Also, a Wartburg was not a point of my interest, except the idea of quite speedy 3-block engine. Anyhow, Your video is a chance to get smth new.
Another way for East Germans to experience "freedom" was nude swimming and sunbathing. This was a very popular pastime. Women were encouraged to join the workforce by getting equal pay and free daycare for their kids. This made them very independent and divorce and out-of-wedlock children were quite common. Yes, the "German Democratic Republic" was not very democratic, but it was a very interesting experiment in "real-existing socialism" as they liked to call it. The Trabant reflected the attitude of the Communist government that "good enough" was better than bad. The people, however, could watch West German TV, and "good enough" looked pretty bad in comparison to what they saw there.
The DKW F8 was rolling in it's grave when it saw it's underpinnings used on this cotton monstrosity
The Trabant was a product of its time,no less than the Mdel T Ford.Both were pretty crude,but made basic transportation available to the masses.Hey,it's better than walking right?
And I gotta wonder if that dude is still adjusting the door on that Trabant...
I have seen some videos about the Trabant car on UA-cam. There are now even a few Trabant's in the United States. The Trabant is a very basic and under powered car with practically no amenities. Today the Trabant has an appeal as a quirky basic car from what used to be Communist East Germany.
To defend the trabi a little bit. Citroen 2CV or renault 4 were also 1940s-1950s designs of small, very slow very spartan cars that were made way up till late 80s with not many changes.
Typically the 2CV is even more barebone than the trabi and performs maybe even worse.
Its common that people actualy forgotten that it was a european class of very small very basic very cheap cars that still existed in 1990s.
And I miss it in fact, nothing like that exists anymore.
An EMP won't knock it out, and you don't need a computer to diagnose what's wrong with it, or fix it yourself. Same as any vehicle pre 1980s.
Imagine having to actually get out of your car, lift the hood and use an actual fucking dip stick just to check your gas. It's like they just took a lawnmower and build a chassis around it. 😂 Entertaining and informative video, guy. You're onto something with the longer form videos.
The Trabant P50 was nicknamed "Kugelporsche" (literally: ball Porsche) by the east germans
Very informative!!! Love historic car vids
I always have love to these old tough-time cars. They're horrendously bad, yet loved by a generation, they had no other option but to go with what they have, and they (somewhat) enjoyed it. The trabant is up there with russia's Gaz-24 and the zaz pharophjigfaeet (not writing that lol)
Why does a Trabant have a rear-window defroster?
To keep your hands warm.........
Well done video. You have a good sense of humor, just don't go nuts.
Great video!
Trabant love You !!!❤❤❤❤
The wall didn’t surround east berlin, it surrounded west berlin since berlin was in east germany.
Actually, it was the other way round... the wall (and barbed-wire fences) were surrounding WEST-Berlin. ;)
And on on the topic of jokes: Why were there no bank robberies in East-Germany? Hard to pull off when you have to wait fifteen years for your getaway car.
Hahaha, that's funny 😂
Brilliant user name, I love the name Aoife (Eva in English)
@@neilfoster814 And here's the funny part, I have absolutely no idea how this name got there (or how to change it for that matter so I just stick with it ;)
I didn’t know the mullet came from Trabant factory workers.
Given the economic and material limits on manufacturing just about ANYTHING in the post-war DDR (the FRG also had those troubles, but largely overcame them due to trade with their one-time adversaries), never mind Communist Bloc politics, corruption, and outright managerial incompetence, that this car was produced at all was nothing short of a tribute to German ingenuity, regardless of whatever political system is in effect. Making the body panels out of a resin that was essentially cheap parts of the refined oil and recycled cotton was a tribute to German chemical genius. No, it wasn't a great car, by any reasonable measure of even when it was first introduced, but for most DDR agencies and the People's Army (the main "customers" of the Trabant line), it was adequate for their needs, and it was GERMAN.
Quality control was a piece of wood and a hammer.
I loved this video! I joined and hope for more!
3:42 those are called composite materials these days. 😊
17:54 It's less so that those people were heading towards freedom and more like heading towards being under new management...
Joke ,most owners after taking delivery phoned their psychiatrist.
Though the Trabant is one of the least sporty cars in the world, the Trabi does actually see competition in motor racing; mainly in a one-make touring car series, comparable to something like the Mini Seven cup here in the UK, albeit with an even slower top speeds.
A Volkswagen Type 1, let alone, a Stihl chainsaw, had more hp than Trabant's original 18 hp engine.
They even made an electric model like they always do. It had 60bhp.