Are these still street legal? I've heard conflicting reports about two-stroke cars in the EU.
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.
Trabant: The East German car remains iconic
11–20 of 107 posts
Re: Trabant: The East German car remains iconic
#12Yes iconic. It has the iconic sound of a lawnmower.
Meanwhile the west had BMWs. Tells a lot about how things were.
Re: Trabant: The East German car remains iconic
#13I'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.
Re: Trabant: The East German car remains iconic
#14I'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, whe…
> 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.
Re: Trabant: The East German car remains iconic
#15I had one! https://fb.com/10203599871583608
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Re: Trabant: The East German car remains iconic
#16Yes 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_...
Re: Trabant: The East German car remains iconic
#17They 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!
Re: Trabant: The East German car remains iconic
#18Yes 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 produc…
> 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").
Re: Trabant: The East German car remains iconic
#19> 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].
Re: Trabant: The East German car remains iconic
#20The 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